Don't touch Medicare...Privatize Medicare

Interesting tactic by the GOP right now, pushing to privatize Medicare and hand out vouchers so people will have the freedom to buy health insurance. This will save the government tons of money, they say. Let's look a little closer.

Fact: Medicare is very expensive, and can't be covered by our tax revenues, even before the GOP forced us to cut taxes on corporations and the rich. Why is that? Because health care costs are rising faster than in any other country on earth. And in the GOP-authored and pushed through 2003 Medicare drug bill, which has cost--and handed big pharma--more than a trillion bucks so far, has a direct provision that Medicare cannot negotiate drug prices with drug companies. So as it is, and not because it's in any way socialist, but a GOP cash cow, it is very expensive.

But all that money has to go somewhere, why are the right wing backers (big industry) wanting to kill it? Because, as many doctors and clinics are finding out, it's hard to get money out of Medicare for services. It is not trivial, but easier to make deals with the health insurance industry. So here's what you do. You kill Medicare as a single-payer, even though used right it could help to control the runaway cost of health care. Then give out cash to people so they can go try to find an individual plan that will cover their health situation, which, if you're over 60, you know that it's damn near impossible. This way, the money goes directly into the health care industry, people assume all of the risk, and there's no control whatsoever on the rising cost of health care. And, the government gets out of the way so industry can fleece us as it sees fit.

The CBO has documented that the plan will not really save the government much, and will strap the elderly with much higher health care costs. And one thing I have a hard time figuring out is why the insurance industry would want all those unprofitable elderly enrolled in the first place? What industry wants to take the thousands upon thousands of elderly Medicare beneficiaries that could never pay in as much as they claim. This can not go well for seniors. They will not get good service, and there will have to be low levels of coverage. BC/BS is not going to assume the structural debt of Medicare, and corporate hospitals and big pharma are not going to give up profits, so something has to give. I think it will be the American people who have very little to say regarding the decisions made about their lives.

The Ryan plan is already costing the GOP political points, and District 26 in upstate NY may be a sign that voters can see what's brewing. But does the GOP care? Naw. Why let voters get in the way of your ideological battles and handouts to big industry? After all, Obama is not one of us, right? So he can't win in 2012. If the GOP keeps following an ideology that does not coincide with the needs of the populace, I would suspect he will, no matter the ad hominem attacks.