Medicare Mediscare Mega problems

Scare tactics? Which party can claim the moral high ground? Here’s something scary. Politicians, like bureaucrats, are reluctant to act, preferring the status quo. Wake up, wise up, except for the ideologues in the Congress, politicians prefer re-election rather than action to confront America’s problems: illegal immigration, energy, free trade… Forget about raising the debt limit until it’s too late and the economy is damaged. Medicaid and Medicare? Changes must be made, means testing at the least, or nothing will be left for anyone. China will loan US money indefinitely to pay for hip replacement? Unlikely.

Paul Ryan gets a taste of his own shameless demagoguery

By Dana Milbank, Published: May 25

If history, as Mark Twain said, does not repeat itself, this must be one of those weeks when it rhymes in unusually precise pentameter.

On Wednesday morning, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), author of the House Republicans’ plan to end the Medicare guarantee, awoke to find that his plan was being blamed for the loss of a solidly Republican congressional seat in a New York special election on Tuesday. So he headed over to the cameras in the Cannon House Office Building Rotunda to vent about Democrats’ “Mediscare” tactics.

“The president and his party have decided to shamelessly distort and demagogue Medicare,” he protested to his former House GOP colleague Joe Scarborough, now host of MSNBC’s morning show.

Moments later, he took his complaint to Fox News morning man Steve Doocy. “It’s a preview of the scare tactics, distortions, demagoguery, to try and scare seniors,” Ryan charged.

He’s right about that. Democrats and, particularly, liberal activists, are engaged in some shameless demagoguery (one group’s ad shows a Ryan look-alike pushing an old woman and her wheelchair off a cliff). And Ryan is well qualified to call out shameless demagoguery and scare tactics: Over the past two years, he has practiced both.

Speaking on the House floor in 2009, he said the Democrats’ health-care legislation would “take coverage away from seniors,” “raise premiums for families” and “cost us nearly 5.5 million jobs.” Later, he said the health plan would bring about government “rationing” of health care.

He also labeled the plan “a government takeover of our healthcare system,” claimed America was at a “tipping point” toward a “European social welfare state,” and gave a wink to the “death panel” allegations. His suggestion that the legislation would result in the IRS getting “16,000 agents” to police the health-care law was knocked down as “wildly inaccurate” by Factcheck.org.

Demagoguery is just one way in which the fight over Ryan’s Medicare reform has followed the rhythm of President Obama’s health-care reform. In both cases, the proponents decided to act without bipartisan support. Opponents whipped up opposition at televised town-hall meetings. Proponents discovered that their nuanced explanations of the policy couldn’t compete with the other side’s shrill sound bites. Endangered lawmakers began to waver, and voters registered their disapproval in special elections (Scott Brown in Massachusetts, and now Kathy Hochulin New York). But the advocates, figuring the public would side with them once all the facts came out, refused to budge.

One difference is Republicans have no chance of enacting Ryan’s plan this year or next — a point Senate Democrats made anew on Wednesday by scheduling a symbolic roll call to vote down the plan. But Democrats are determined to take the issue to voters in 2012, the way Republicans did in 2010 with health care. After Tuesday night’s victory — involving the New York seat once held by Ryan’s mentor, Jack Kemp — Rep. Steve Israel, who runs the House Democrats’ campaign, called it “a very serious warning sign to Republicans who would continue this reckless scheme to terminate Medicare.”

Ryan responded just as the Democrats had responded during the health-care fight: with bookish analysis. Ryan, on Scarborough’s show, went into a numbing discussion of Burkean conservatism, the Brookings Institution and long-forgotten government commissions.

“Paul, so that took you about two, two and a half minutes to explain,” Scarborough pointed out.

“That’s the problem,” Ryan acknowledged.

Yet even 2 ½ minutes was more succinct than Ryan’s earlier effort Wednesday: a 4-minute, 54-second video that employs stick figures, dotted lines and drawings of dollars, doctor bills and medical symbols with snakes.

Ryan might be worthy of more sympathy if he hadn’t been one of the people clubbing Democrats with slogans about trampled liberty as they labored to explain exchanges and cost curves. Now Ryan is the one trying to define the narrow difference between “premium support” and “vouchers” while Democrats accuse him of forcing seniors into destitution.

To his credit, Ryan acknowledged on Wednesday that his own side had been guilty of the same. “Both parties do this to each other,” he told CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo at a forum Wednesday hosted by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. “Every time you put out a reform plan to fix this, the other party uses it as a weapon against you.. . .What that ends up doing is inflicting political paralysis.”

Ryan had a chance to break this historical cycle when he released his budget. But instead, he cast aside bipartisan solutions and said he wanted to take the issue to voters. Democrats gave him exactly what he asked for.

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/paul-ryan-gets-a-taste-of-his-own-shameless-demagoguery/2011/05/25/AGeROUBH_story.html

LadyChurchill wrote:
Wake up Mr Milbank, these programs are ponsi schemes at their worst. And now the pyramid is getting ever smaller at its base, which is why they must be reformed. We have less people putting in and more people taking out, just how do you make that work? The answer is, it doesn’t. Stop with the lies and start being honest with the readers, there really isn’t a free lunch, we all pay sooner or later.
Today 5/26/2011 4:55:26 AM EDT

saulpaulus wrote:
How are the Democrats engaging in demagoguery? They are simply describing what Ryan’s plan does. It will make medical care unaffordable or even unatttainable for millions of America’s poor and elderly citizens. And this is being proposed so as to avoid ending tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans. The President has already said that he would support spending cuts including modest changes to Medicare and Medicaid if Congress also agreed to eliminate the tax cuts. That is what should be done.
Today 5/26/2011 4:41:33 AM EDT

kcbob wrote:
Paul Ryan is channeling former General William Westmorland: “We have to destroy Medicare in order to save it.”
Today 5/26/2011 4:29:07 AM EDT

cassandra9 wrote:
The interesting part is that two years ago the Republicans claimed that the health care reform law would endanger Medicare as we know it. They used the claimed threat to Medicare to whip up fear and fury against the legislation, especially among seniors. Republicans shouldn’t be surprised that the Ryan proposal to fundamentally alter Medicare would be met with the same fear and fury. If they are surprised by the reaction it might be because they don’t realize that you can’t play subtle spin games with Medicare. People have fully embraced the program. You can tweek it, but you cannot take it away. Medicare is not a messaging plaything. It is the health care light at the end of the tunnel for most Americans. It is hope that they will have full access to the medical care that will make ageing bearable. It was cynical of Republicans to use Medicare to manipulate voters. It is stupid of them to think they can mess with it without raising voter ire.
Today 5/26/2011 4:28:20 AM EDT

PS7900 wrote:
Milbank writes a piece blaming someone else of “shameless demagoguery.” Amazing. He can’t possibly have a mirror left in the house.
Today 5/26/2011 4:27:00 AM EDT

jazbond007 wrote:
Obamacare cut $500 billion from Medicare.
Medicare sucks. I am scared as hell that I will be relying on this stupid bankrupt program when I get old. The best benefits seem to be doctors don’t want it and Obamacare has a panel to ration it. 
Too bad WaPo can’t investigate Obamacare waivers and pretend FOIA does not exist. The White House does whatevs and there are no journalists to ask them why don’t they comply with laws they passed.
Today 5/26/2011 4:23:31 AM EDT

cadbury wrote:
Crazy, expensive patchwork system. Time for Single-Payer!!!
Today 5/26/2011 4:05:37 AM EDT

Geopolitics1 wrote:
Insurance Executive Compensation 2007

Aetna Ronald A. Williams: $23,045,834
Cigna H. Edward Hanway: $25,839,777
Coventry Dale B. Wolf : $14,869,823
Health Net Jay M. Gellert: $3,686,230
Humana Michael McCallister: $10,312,557
U.Health Grp Stephen J. Hemsley: $13,164,529
WellPoint Angela Braly (2007): $9,094,271
L. Glasscock (2006): $23,886,169

Insurance Executive Compensation 2008

Aetna, Ronald A. Williams: $24,300,112
Cigna, H. Edward Hanway: $12,236,740
Coventry, Dale Wolf: $9,047,469
Health Net, Jay Gellert: $4,425,355
Humana, Michael McCallister: $4,764,309
U. Health Group, Stephen J. Hemsley: $3,241,042
Wellpoint, Angela Braly: $9,844,212
Today 5/26/2011 2:25:55 AM EDT

mary1961 wrote:
Mr. Milbank sounds like the biggest demagogue ever… Democrats using fear to get old people to vote for them? No, that’s not demagoguery. Republicans saying, “Stop spending” – oh no, man the brigades. 
Mr. Ryan is no more a “demagogue” than Mr. Milbank is a “journalist” or the WaPo or NYTimes actually objectively report “news.”
Today 5/26/2011 2:04:22 AM EDT

sunsetpark wrote:
The funniest part of Ryan’s reaction so far has been his absolute disbelief that his plan could have upset seniors. “But this doesn’t affect any of them,” he mewled on Fox. “There are no changes for anyone over 55 now.”

Apparently, he’s incredulous that current seniors aren’t behaving in the selfish and greedy way his philosophy predicts everyone should act, and are voting against him. Imagine that! — a social reaction to a change in a social plan!

Either that, or seniors can see that after the Republicans cut off the plan for one age group, they’ll be emboldened to come after the rest.

Meanwhile, all this hand-wringing over costs to the national budget of providing healthcare to a fraction of the population is hilarious. For less public money than we spend (adjusted for total population, including the privately insured and the uninsured), the UK manages to cover everyone in their entire country in a public plan. Instead of trying to break up a patchwork system and make it even more patchwork, we could much more substantially slim the national budget, while raising real net income for individuals and companies (except for the health insurance sector, natch), and even improve health outcomes, by accepting “socialized medicine”. There’s no reason England can make this work while we can’t.

As for quality of care, my brother-in-law in England has been going through hell with colon cancer these last few years. Despite being given two years at the outset to live, National Health has been aggressively treating him these last four years with compassionate care and excellent results, long after I think health insurers in the US would have balked at paying for experimental treatments and repeated courses of drugs, and surgeries to repair some of the collateral damage. For all the hell he’s been through, none of it has involved filling out forms, paying bills, or arguing for treatment, and he manages to have some decent quality of life in between hospital visits. The phrase “socialized medicine” has a pejorative quality it just doesn’t deserve. National Health is actually pretty decent. And, did I mention it’s way more cost effective, with easier to control growth curves than either single-payer or private health?
Today 5/26/2011 1:36:26 AM EDT

Chops2 wrote:
Can we now derisivley call this Ryancare?
Today 5/26/2011 12:23:35 AM EDT

dijetlau wrote:
This is what happens when 17th century economic philosophy runs into 21st Century reality. 
It’s hard to argue that something is impossible when every other industrialized country manages to do it. In the end, he’s become a billboard for a single payer health system now that everybody agrees that a for profit health care system is untenable.
Today 5/26/2011 12:08:53 AM EDT

vanwahlgren wrote:
Wow Dana ,, You hit the nail ( I mean the Nitwit Ryan) on the head! keep up the good articles!
Today 5/26/2011 12:06:52 AM EDT

ethereal_reality wrote:
It is amazing that the GOP is willing to disown the elderly while kissing the a$$-cheeks of millionaires and billionaires.
The average American is finally catching on to these despicable tactics.  
Today 5/26/2011 12:04:39 AM EDT

windmill3 wrote:
Medicare in its present format is unsustainable and needs to be reformed. What is the democrats plan to fix this problem. Enlighten me please! Gardiner Harris reported in the St. Louis Post Dispatch on 5/12/11 that Medicare spent $116 million on antipsychotic drugs for elderly nursing home residents with a diagnosis of dementia. It is a well known fact that this is not a good practice as antipsychotics are more likely to lead to sudden death than a cognitive improvement but alas, drug companies do pay kickbacks to psychiatrists and nursing home chains. Should we ask the democrats to work on problems of that nature?
5/25/2011 9:47:46 PM EDT

Joelhassfam4 wrote:
Good luck with that suggestion, asking Democrats to work. Budget submission from the Majority party of the Senate? Almost 2 years and counting.
Hey, their idols are Wisconsin colleagues who fled the state when real work and representation were needed, and this behavior is still applauded in Democrat circles. Yeah, there is the irony of that word, circles. That is the only direction that party works in.
Incumbency is incompetency. Voting for President is not the important slot in 2012. It is your individual state’s primaries and general election for state and federal representatives that will impact as much if not more for 2013.
5/25/2011 9:55:13 PM EDT

Medicare Mediscare Mega problems