Video: Paul Ryan discusses Obama's health care proposal. Good, but not great.
Perhaps discussing is the wrong term, perhaps skewers or shreds is more appropriate. In five or six minutes Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) runs through the costs of Obama's proposal and brings to light the many painful aspects that we have been talking about for the past several months. First and foremost, the entire plan is way too expensive and while Obama's proposal is not yet scored by the CBO the Senate's version was indeed scored and the scoring was based on misleading information.
Ryan delves into specific tricks and gimmicks that he believes were injected into the bill on purpose to offset the cost deficit. The true cost over ten years of this new government health care proposal will result in over 400 billion in losses, but that number is useless. Because as you remember, the bill is front loaded which means that taxes and cuts to Medicare will go on for ten years, but spending will only go on for six. If you were to look out in twenty years the deficit jumps over one trillion! This is all according to the CBO and government projections. Now, when was the last time the government projected anything correctly? Remember back in 1965 they projected that Medicare would only cost 10 billion a year by 1990? True cost however exceeded 60 billion, just a bit off?
See, it is easy to pass some feel-good campaign promise and pat yourself on the back, but when you create an entitlement that in ten, twenty, thirty or more years threatens the entire solvency of America then you have committed financial atrocity. Virtually everything that spawned out of LBJ's Great Society is akin to financial Armageddon, because we have no means of paying all the promises created by Medicare/Medicaid. Furthermore the damage done by Medicare/Medicaid through subsidizing over 90 million Americans (almost 30%) with health care that is BELOW market price is simply incalculable. Even despite all that Medicare/Medicaid are broke, but now every single person's medical costs are higher as the gap created by the entitlement programs are left to the taxpayers. This is why medical costs are through the roof and this is why insurance premiums are in the stratosphere.
Ultimately Ryan is exactly right, but I just wish for once, just once, Republicans grew a pair and talked about the cancerous tumor festering in our system. Government run health care for 30% of the population at below market cost. How can anyone talk about fixing a system, when a third of of the population, a third that consumes the most health care by the way, is doing so at the expense of the other 70%? This is the problem, fix Medicare/Medicaid and then talk about everything else.
Ryan delves into specific tricks and gimmicks that he believes were injected into the bill on purpose to offset the cost deficit. The true cost over ten years of this new government health care proposal will result in over 400 billion in losses, but that number is useless. Because as you remember, the bill is front loaded which means that taxes and cuts to Medicare will go on for ten years, but spending will only go on for six. If you were to look out in twenty years the deficit jumps over one trillion! This is all according to the CBO and government projections. Now, when was the last time the government projected anything correctly? Remember back in 1965 they projected that Medicare would only cost 10 billion a year by 1990? True cost however exceeded 60 billion, just a bit off?
See, it is easy to pass some feel-good campaign promise and pat yourself on the back, but when you create an entitlement that in ten, twenty, thirty or more years threatens the entire solvency of America then you have committed financial atrocity. Virtually everything that spawned out of LBJ's Great Society is akin to financial Armageddon, because we have no means of paying all the promises created by Medicare/Medicaid. Furthermore the damage done by Medicare/Medicaid through subsidizing over 90 million Americans (almost 30%) with health care that is BELOW market price is simply incalculable. Even despite all that Medicare/Medicaid are broke, but now every single person's medical costs are higher as the gap created by the entitlement programs are left to the taxpayers. This is why medical costs are through the roof and this is why insurance premiums are in the stratosphere.
Ultimately Ryan is exactly right, but I just wish for once, just once, Republicans grew a pair and talked about the cancerous tumor festering in our system. Government run health care for 30% of the population at below market cost. How can anyone talk about fixing a system, when a third of of the population, a third that consumes the most health care by the way, is doing so at the expense of the other 70%? This is the problem, fix Medicare/Medicaid and then talk about everything else.
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