Well, that didn’t take long. Just days after the election and already the GOP has confirmed, what we’ve been warning for months. Destroying traditional Medicare in favor of a privatized CouponCare system is at the top of the Republican agenda. In fact, they want it to happen as soon as next year.
“Below is a transcript of what Ryan said on Fox’s Special Report, along with a flat out false statement suggesting that Obamacare has weakened Medicare’s finances.
BRET BAIER: Your solution has always been to put things together including entitlement reform. That is Paul Ryan’s plan. That’s not Donald Trump’s plan.
PAUL RYAN: Well, you have to remember, when Obamacare became Obamacare, Obamacare rewrote Medicare, rewrote Medicaid. If you are going to repeal and replace Obamacare, you have to address those issues as well. What a lot of folks don’t realize is this 21-person board called the ipap is about to kick in with price controls on Medicare. What people don’t realize is because of Obamacare, Medicare is going broke, Medicare is going to have price controls because of Obamacare, Medicaid is in fiscal straits. You have to deal with those issues if you are going to repeal and replace Obamacare. Medicare has serious problems [because of] Obamacare. Those are part of our plan.” …Talking Points Memo
Let’s be crystal clear about this – without Obamacare, Medicare’s Part A trust fund would have faced insolvency now. Instead, because of the cost savings in the Affordable Care Act, including; trimming the billions in government subsidies going to the insurance industry in Medicare Advantage and productivity adjustments to how Medicare pays providers the program gained more than a decade of solvency.
“The net result was that the “insolvency” date was extended by 12 years. Before the law was passed, the trustees said in 2009, the fund was going to be depleted in 2017. “The short-range financial outlook for the HI [hospital insurance] trust fund is substantially more favorable than projected in last year’s annual report, primarily as a result of the Affordable Care Act,” the Medicare trustees said in their 2010 report, saying the fund would last until 2029.”…Washington Post
Fact checkers appropriately gave Speaker Ryan Four Pinnochios for this obvious lie:
“Medicare certainly faces financial stress as the baby-boom generation begins to retire in full force, but it’s important to get the facts straight. It’s bad enough that Ryan, like many politicians, uses imprecise rhetoric such as “broke”; that’s a Two-Pinocchio violation. But the House speaker really went off the rails when he said on national television that Obamacare is making the program go broke. That’s the exact opposite of what happened.”
As we’ve said here before, repeal of the ACA will have an immediate impact on seniors. While Republicans continue their cynical promise that “reforms” won’t touch current seniors (because they believe America’s “greedy geezers” only care about their own benefits and don’t care about what happens to their children and grandchildren) the truth is, repealing Obamacare hits millions of American seniors immediately and robs the Part A trust fund of more than a decade of solvency:
“Medicare’s financing challenges would be much greater without the health reform law (the Affordable Care Act, or ACA), which substantially improved the program’s financial outlook. Repealing the ACA, a course of action promoted by some who simultaneously claim that the program is approaching “bankruptcy,” would worsen Medicare’s financial situation.”… Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
“The Affordable Care Act strengthens Medicare’s financing by increasing efforts to reduce waste, fraud and abuse; slowing the rate of increase in payments to providers; improving quality of care and phasing out overpayments to private Medicare Advantage plans, plans that are continuing to increase their enrollments each year. The impact of these provisions has already resulted in extending the solvency of the Medicare Part A Trust Fund by more than a decade and lowering Part B out-of-pocket costs for beneficiaries.
In addition to Medicare beneficiaries, the Affordable Care Act is very important to millions of adults ages 50-64 who are uninsured because they do not have access to affordable private insurance. Many of these individuals are now able to purchase private insurance even if they have pre-existing medical conditions, and costs are more affordable due to the law’s limits on age rating and the subsidies available for lower-income beneficiaries.
The number of uninsured “young seniors,” aged 50-64, would increase, leaving them in poorer health by the time they are eligible for Medicare – thereby increasing Medicare’s costs.”…NCPSSM, 2015 ACA Repeal Letter to Congress
And all of this only addresses the clearly false assertion made by Speaker Ryan that Medicare is going “bankrupt” and that Obamacare is the reason. What is equally important for seniors to understand is what Ryan’s CouponCare plan actually means for them. We’ll address that more completely in a future post but as a reminder: the Ryan plan will end traditional Medicare, privatizing it, while raising seniors’ costs. Under CouponCare seniors pay more for less coverage.
The GOP’s voucher plan works this way:
– Rather than you going to your doctor and Medicare pays the bill, under CouponCare the federal government will give you a voucher each year that you will then use to go out and buy private insurance out in the open market or to pay for Medicare.
– However, those coupons’ values are based on the cost of Medicare in a particular community or the second lowest private health insurance plan, whichever is cheaper. So if, you choose to stay in traditional Medicare, and it costs more than virtually the cheapest plan out there, you’ll pay more. Let’s be really clear, vouchers are designed to shift costs to seniors. That’s how the government saves money.
The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates 59% of seniors would have to pay higher premiums in order to receive the same Medicare plans they now have, with the average premium increase coming in at $107 per month, they didn’t even look at co-pays and out-of-pocket costs.
The Congressional Budget Office looked at this in 2011 and said it would double beneficiaries’ costs.
After George Bush won re-election in 2004 and the Republicans controlled Congress, privatizing Social Security was the first order of business. Here were go again — but this time your Medicare is the target. The American people don’t support privatizing Medicare; however, it has long been the goal of conservatives who believe seniors should be forced back into a private insurance marketplace which history has proven, over and over again, they simply can’t afford.