No Romney-Ryan Do Not Preserve Traditional Medicare

     ThinkProgress has a very important piece about the real nature of Romney's plan for Medicare-the Ryan plan, in reality.

      One of the myriad lies of Romney's debate "win" over Obama was the false claim that he will preserve traditional Medicare. There is nothing more false than that the Ryan plan lets you keep Medicare if that's your choice.

      Now, at the debate-if Romney really did win that debate it's amazing how myth-based as opposed to fact-based it was-Romney claimed that he preserves traditional Medicare:

      "But Romney consistently obfuscated the details of his plan, which would actually result in massive cost-shifting onto consumers and fundamentally weaken the traditional Medicare entitlement. Here is what Romney said about Medicare Wednesday night:

…Number two is for people coming along that are young. What I’d do to make sure that we can keep Medicare in place for them is to allow them either to choose the current Medicare program or a private plan — their choice.They get to — and they’ll have at least two plans that will be entirely at no cost to them. So they don’t have to pay additional money, no additional $6,000. That’s not going to happen.

      "Setting aside the fact that Romney’s own stated desire to repeal Obamacare would raise the price of prescription drugs, preventative care, and Medicare Advantage premiums on current as well as future beneficiaries, Romney’s statements underplay just how radically his proposal — and the plan laid out by running mate Paul Ryan — would change Medicare for beneficiaries in 2023 and beyond."

      "From his comments during the debate, you would think that his plan is a simple alteration in Medicare’s funding mechanism, or an expansion of the kinds of private coverage plans available under Medicare Advantage. But that’s just not true. The Romney/Ryan plan would take Medicare, which is a “defined benefit” program, and turn it into a “defined contribution” program."

      "Basically, instead of the federal government guaranteeing that beneficiaries receive a host of defined services — as it does now — the federal government would instead set a hard budget for Medicare and then toss a chunk of cash at beneficiaries and let them choose from a host of private plans or traditional fee-for-service Medicare to get coverage. This means that if the calculated “premium support” subsidies for insurance and benchmark plans under the Romney/Ryan proposal do not cover all of a beneficiary’s needs, consumers would be forced to pay the difference out of pocket to get a plan that does. As health care costs rise, that will shift more and more financial burden onto consumers while their federal subsidies grow at a rate that simply can’t keep up with medical inflation/"
 
      http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/10/05/968111/romneys-big-medicare-fibs/

      This is very important and the Democrats need to make this very clear. While I don't think the President failed as badly as the conventional wisdom thinks right now-and of course the jobs report may well mitigate whatever short term bounce Romney gets-it is true that the President in the debate did avoid at all confrontational with Romney.

      Why this is, I think, is that the strategy going in was for him to play a prevent defense. As football fans know this can be a risky strategy. When you play not to lose that is exactly what does happen.

       For all that, his strategy in some ways worked very well. There was not a single gaffe, unforced error, or blooper. Which is far from the case for Romney. I think Axelrod was right when he said that while Romney's strategy was short-term successful in the longer term it may come back to bite him.

      The one thing that is clear, though, is that Biden will not have any trouble confronting Ryan this week. You don't have to tell him to go after Ryan that's what Joe does, what he is: an attack dog who is very loyal to the President.

      He will be on the attack and he will do it to benefit the President. Hopefully he makes the point of this ThinkProgress piece: that the Ryan Medicare plan does not preserve traditional Medicare by any means.

      Another myth that Romney-Ryan need to be called on is that they only end Medicare for those over 55. No they cut it for those under 55 as well. This is obvious if you understand how health insurance works. The healthy people pay for the sick; the young for the old. If you take the young off of Medicare where is the money going to come from that will pay for the old?