Unicorns, and Affordable Private Health Insurance for Seniors [View all]
The Romney/Ryan Repeal Obamacare and End Medicare movement is based on the idea that the entire health care system must be funneled through private insurers, and on whatever terms they set. (Because private insurers are teh awesome)
So money collected for Medicare will be redistributed to seniors in the form of coupons to buy private health insurance.
(Talk about a mandate! The government takes money out of your paycheck for your entire working life and, if you are lucky, "gives it back to you" in the form of coupons for a specific product!?)
One of the many problems with the Romney/Ryan plan to Repeal Obamacare and End Medicare is this...
Who in their right mind would sell heath insurance to seniors? Seriously. Being of advanced age is the ultimate pre-existing condition.
What does private health insurance in America cost for someone in their eighties? Nobody knows. Because of Medicare we do not have a big insurance market for seniors.
Medicare is non-profit and has massive efficiencies of scale. It is impossible... I will say that again, IMPOSSIBLE for the private sector to offer comparable benefits for the same money, let alone for less money. We might as well give people coupons to buy unicorns.
But Ryan guesses that private insurers will be lining up to offer affordable health insurance to seniors (which is absurd), and if not... fuck 'em. They should have thought of that before getting old.
The Romney/Ryan plan is simply the elimination of Medicare. Saying it will be replaced with vouchers to buy a product that doesn't exist but that Ryan imagines might be affordable is the elimination of Medicare except as a way for the government to rob working people of their wages to then funnel those wages into the pockets of private insurance companies while providing much, much, much less coverage dollar for dollar.
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