Best Clint Eastwood tweet ~

[BlueStreak]

33. You have to look 10 years down the road

These guys have been trying to kill Medicare continuously since it started. This is just another tactic.

Pretty Boy Ryan got his ass handed to him when he came out with the plan that put everybody on vouchers. So now he is back with a more disingenuous plan that is less financially sound. But it still ends up at the same place. It just takes 10 years to get there, but once they put that first step in place, they know they will have started the dominoes falling in a way that cannot be stopped.

Let's set aside the near term things. You are correct in the siphoning argument, but that is hard for non-accountants to understand, and therefore is not the point we should be emphasizing.

The thing that is easier to understand is the thing that NOBODY is talking about. If Ryan's plan were in effect today, 55-year-olds would have the chance to opt out of Medicare. And it would be in their short-term financial interest to do so. By opting out, they would end up with more take-home pay today. So the people who are going to opt out are mostly people who will not have the savings to pay for their private insurance when they are 65.

Now look down the road 10 years. What happens when these opt-out people can no longer work. They can't buy insurance. They have a worthless voucher in hand. Medicare does not exist as far as they are concerned.

The first year, maybe there are just a half million. But then the next year, it is a million, then 2 million. Eventually it becomes 15-25 million seniors who have no coverage -- and it all started with this Ryan plan.

Again I ask the most basic question. What do we do with 15,000,000 very expensive seniors with no health insurance? You know they will all end up on the ERs. How do we deal with that?