2012 ELECTION

[HairOfTheDog]

Ryan Medicare Reform / Federal Spending

I like the Medicare Reform plan, whereby seniors would be offered a choice to purchase private health care with vouchers (health care providers would compete for the business) or choose traditional Medicare. While low-income seniors would be entitled to subsidies, the plan is expected to greatly reduce the Federal Medicare expense and encourage competition and better services via private sector providers. Also like that the current proposal is bi-partisan, developed by conservative Paul Ryan and liberal Ron Wyden (good one page recap by Ryan and Wyden at link). Imo, health care for seniors will be improved, not destroyed, under the reform plan.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424...80636.html

What I'm unsure about is whether having the changes kick in starting in 2022 is soon enough. My understanding is that at that point, the government would start issuing seniors $8,000 a year in vouchers to buy private coverage (currently, the government spends an average of $11,000 per Medicare recipient). I don't think implementation can or should start overnight to reform a system and expectation that's been in place for 5 decades, but the bubble of baby boomers is part of the problem with the increasing exorbitant annual Medicare expenses.

The system needs to change for the future, no doubt about it, imo. But, I wonder if by waiting 10 years for implementation one of the biggest challenges with the current system is being skirted and whether that's due, in part, to fear of losing the senior vote.

I'm actually looking forward to the Vice Presidential debates as much or more than the Presidential ones at this point. I want to see timelines, numbers and percentages attached to the proposals being floated to pull the US out of deficit.

This 2011 chart gives a good overview of how federal funds were spent and generated; scary.