{"id":6201,"date":"2011-06-06T12:28:33","date_gmt":"2011-06-06T17:28:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=6201"},"modified":"2011-06-06T12:32:45","modified_gmt":"2011-06-06T17:32:45","slug":"vouchercare-is-not-medicare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2011\/06\/06\/vouchercare-is-not-medicare\/","title":{"rendered":"Vouchercare Is Not Medicare"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul Krugman has written the column Vouchercare Is Not Medicare<\/strong><\/a> in The New York Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Here are some quotes from the column:<\/p>\n

Medicare is a government-run insurance system that directly pays health-care providers. Vouchercare would cut checks to insurance companies instead. Specifically, the program would pay a fixed amount toward private health insurance \u2014 higher for the poor, lower for the rich, but not varying at all with the actual level of premiums. If you couldn\u2019t afford a policy adequate for your needs, even with the voucher, that would be your problem.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He concludes:<\/p>\n

So in voting for the House budget plan, Republicans voted to end Medicare. Saying that isn\u2019t demagoguery, it\u2019s just pointing out the truth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think Paul Krugman has come up with the right name for the issue pointed out in the previous post on this blog, \u00a0 Are They Killing Medicare?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

McClatchy<\/em> news has an article Ryan Medicare plan puts GOP candidates on the spot<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

I responded to that one with a couple of comments of my own.<\/p>\n

The Democratic plan is to get control of health care costs in all realms including Medicare.<\/p>\n

Remember that it was Obama himself who said that the largest issue (and the one that needed to be worked on first was) for future budget deficits was the rising cost of health care.<\/p>\n

Lot’s of Republicans were claiming that he should have worked on job creation first\u00a0 (which he had already done) and left healthcare alone.\u00a0 Now they are ignoring job creation and want to kill Medicare and replace it with something else.<\/p>\n

They scored Obama for cuts to Medicare (actually doing away with the subsidy to private insurance companies called Medicare Advantage)\u00a0 Now they want to do something a lot worse than what they accused Obama of doing.<\/p>\n

Are the people who would vote for a Republican paying any attention at all?\u00a0 It is just amazing that the GOP thinks that they can get away with all these reverse twists and think nobody will notice.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I noticed something about the Republican’s plans:<\/p>\n

There is one consistent theme in everything the Republicans do.\u00a0 If it hurts the super rich it is bad, but if it hurts everybody else to the benefit of the super rich then it is good.<\/p>\n

They thought Obama was awful for taking away the private insurance welfare plan called Medicare Advantage.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Their plan would give even more subsidies to the insurance companies and take it out of the hides of everybody else.<\/p>\n

In their eyes Obama’s plan was not bad because it disadvantaged most people.\u00a0 They thought it was bad because it didn’t give enough to the super rich.\u00a0 Now they have come up with a scheme to fix Obama’s plan to their liking. They think they can fool the rest of us into thinking it is a deficit reduction plan, when it is in fact a plan to shift more wealth from the majority to those who are already super wealthy.<\/p>\n

What will the Republicans do when they have managed to shift 100% of the nation’s wealth to the super wealthy and left the rest of us with nothing?\u00a0 Will they start asking for arms and legs?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paul Krugman has written the column Vouchercare Is Not Medicare in The New York Times. Here are some quotes from the column: Medicare is a government-run insurance system that directly pays health-care providers. Vouchercare would cut checks to insurance companies instead. Specifically, the program would pay a fixed amount toward private health insurance \u2014 higher […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6201","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6201"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6205,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6201\/revisions\/6205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}