Why is Senate Democrat Ron Wyden Teaming up with GOP Rep Paul Ryan to Destroy Medicare?

[karynnj]

26. We do not know this

It was clear that he was annoyed when the HCR bill was designed that his and Roberts' alternative was ignored. He spoke often of it being the bipartisan alternative - and it had some support by people here angry with Baucus. I suspect that had it ever been seriously considered as the vehicle for HCR, Roberts and the other Republicans would have found flaws - just as they refused to back the plan that they were given a chance to impact.

Now his idea there was not as bad as this idea. His HCR bill was competing with the bill that was passed. This is competing with the single payer Medicare system which it really can't legitimately compete with - unless the private plans get larger subsidies than Medicare or if they depend on "cream skimming" - in which case they will doom Medicare as we know it.

Cream skimming would be where a private company offers a rate dependent on heath, making it attractive to the those that are healthier. It will likely be that they can not vary the price, but another way to do this is to design benefits that have low preventative costs , but high deductibles on illnesses and injuries. This makes the plan better for people who are healthy, but worse for the most fragile or sickly. If you can deal with one year of the paying the full high deductible, this could save you money because of the lower costs for the services you use while healthy. This assumes that people are free to change every year. Then you could see people select these when healthy and switch to standard Medicare as they get chronic illnesses. Then if the voucher provided the same dollar amount, you actually create a situation where the higher administrative costs of the private plans are more than compensated by the higher medical costs per person. Meanwhile, Medicare will have higher costs per person, but presumably they would be constrained to the amount they get from all the vouchers of people on Medicare.