Republicans Face Summer Backlash for Support of Ryan Plan

A couple of years ago, when a man at a town hall meeting in Simpsonville, S.C., railed at his Congressman to ''keep your government hands off my Medicare'', it was met with guffaws. But when Republicans go home for the summer recess, after attempts to manhandle Medicare by passage of Paul Ryan’s budget plan, that outcry won’t seem so misinformed anymore.

Under the Ryan plan, Medicare would arguably no longer be a government program. It would be reduced to no more than issuing an annual check to the health insurance industry as directed by each senior.

In a deft maneuver Majority Leader Harry Reid forced a Senate vote on the Ryan plan knowing it would fail. It did, by 57 to 40. But the tactic served to get 40 more Republican fingerprints on the bill in addition to those who had passed the plan in the Republican-controlled House. Thus armed, the Democrats can be expected to serve up a torrent of 2012 election ads with mug shots of those Republicans up for re-election who tried to take away Medicare.

We will also see an inundation of television ads from the health insurance companies and their trade associations in favor of Ryan’s plan because it would hand over the entirety of Medicare to them.

Republicans view the Ryan plan as a commendable attempt to rescue Medicare from certain impending bankruptcy, for which Democrats have no plan at all. Democrats view Ryan’s extreme restructuring as a surreptitious attempt to realize the Republican dream of abolishing government social programs.

The plan would not begin until 2022 and would be only for those now 55 years old and under; all above that age would continue under today’s Medicare. Seniors would shop for an insurance plan that best suits them. Medicare would then issue a subsidy payment to the insurer. The senior pays the rest.

And the rest would be considerable. Ryan’s budget indicates that the subsidy 11 years from now, in the face of insurance premiums presumably continuing their inexorable rise year after year, would only be $6,000. Others have said $8,000.

But actually all current seniors would be affected – and right now. The Ryan plan would immediately repeal Obama’s huge Affordable Care Act. That would re-open the “donut hole” in Medicare’s drug plan, whereby seniors will again have to pay 100% of their drug costs each year when total expense reaches $2840 and until Medicare resumes coverage at $4550.

As an indication of things to come, the day before the Senate vote, Democrat Kathy Hochul won a special election in New York’s 26th Congressional district, a district so solidly Republican (74% in the last election) that the Democratic Party ranks it as the 426th most impossible-to-win district with only 9 others in the country ranked more impossible still.

One commentator said 70% of Tea Party members don’t want to change Medicare.

Representative Ryan is undaunted. He says that Democrats “shamelessly distort and demagogue”. He says about seniors that “whenever I do town hall meetings. once they understand the facts, they want these solutions”. He exhorted his fellow Republicans when they head for home “not to go wobbly”.

Hardly noticed was that right after the Senate voted down the Ryan program, it banished Obama’s budget plan 97-0, demonstrating that it has finally dawned on Democrats as well that cuts must be made in the nation’s huge spending excesses.

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