Ryan-Romney Poise as Medicare's Saviors

     This is going to be a big part of their campaign, it's already clear. They will attempt to reverse the perception and argue that it's actually they who really want to save Medicare, and Obama who wants to kill it-first by taking $700 billion out of the program to redirect to the ACA-and also bey "not being serious" about the reforms needed to "save" Medicare.

    By the way, my saying "Ryan-Romney" rather than "Romney-Ryan" was no accident. When have you see an election where the VP's policy ideas are more important that the Presidential candidate's?

    As I argued in my last post, Romney is gong to try to make this case-while at the same time pretending that he;s not wholly set on the Ryan plan and that he has "his own budget blueprint" he will be working on.

   Yes, I'm sure he'll get to that around the time that O.J. Simpson gets to finding Nicole Simpson's real killer.

    "Romney sought to cast President Obama as the one trying to cut the program and the Republicans as the one trying to save it."

    "The president’s idea, for instance, for Medicare was to cut it by $700 billion," Romney said. "That’s not the right answer – we want to make sure that we preserve and protect Medicare. The president’s plan for our budget deficit was to make it worse. Paul Ryan and I are going to get America to cut our spending and to finally get us to a balanced budget."

    "Romney has begun painting Ryan as a problem solver who will work in a bipartisan manner to fix Medicare. On Sunday, he cited legislation that had Democrats as cosponsors that change the program.

    "He attacks problems, and he recognizes that there are honest differences between honest people and he looks to find ways to find common ground to bring people together," Romney said. "He’s come up with ideas that are very different from the president’s."

    "This has been Romney's approach since Saturday, to refocus back on Obama as far as Medicare goes. But there is a difference between the approaches to Medicare that Ryan recommends and what Obama's plan contains, and defining those details is where Democrats believe Ryan will hit headwinds."

   http://www.politico.com/blogs/burns-haberman/?hp=bh

    This narrative conveniently leaves out the fact that Ryan wanted the $700 billion cut too where he disagreed with was that the President redirected it towards a new health insurance entitlement for Americans-which will enable 32 million of the uninsured to get insurance, among other benefits.
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   It leaves off as well that Ryan wanted it taken away from recipients of Medicare whereas the President's measure came from providers.

   Then of course, it's one thing to cut a part of the program for whatever reason as opposed to Ryan's plan to abolish it in whole cloth by block granting it out to the states-ie, privatizing it.