This is a very clear summary of the Republican Budget plan that they voted on today…
Basically, it ends Medicare for anyone currently under age 55.
Do you want to be old and at the mercy of insurance companies?
Do you have enough money saved to pay the additional $7000 per year it would cost you to pay for this insurance? That is if the insurance companies will even offer it…
Think long and hard, folks…
Elections have consequences….
From the NY TImes:
Representative Paul Ryan and the House Republicans are portraying their budget proposal for the next fiscal year as a courageous effort to finally bring federal spending on Medicare under control. An analysis issued last week by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office finds that the Ryan proposal would sharply reduce federal spending — but at the price of shifting more of Medicare’s costs onto beneficiaries and their families.
How much more? Calculations derived from the C.B.O. analysis show that in 2022, when the Ryan plan would kick in, the typical 65-year-old would pay $6,400 to $7,000 more per year than would be paid for comparable coverage under traditional Medicare.
Mr. Ryan’s proposal would change Medicare from an entitlement program in which the government pays for a defined set of medical services into a “premium support” program in which the government would give beneficiaries money to help them buy private insurance. He contends that competition among health care plans and more judicious use of health care services by beneficiaries can help bring down the cost of health care and reduce the federal government’s burden.
But the C.B.O. says a private plan offering comparable benefits would be a lot more expensive than traditional Medicare because the private insurer would have higher administrative costs, would need to make a profit and, in an extrapolation of current trends, would pay hospitals, doctors and other providers substantially more than Medicare does. Beneficiaries would have to pay higher out-of-pocket costs or buy skimpier policies.
The Ryan plan has no chance of becoming law while the Democrats still control the Senate and the White House. But if health care becomes a defining issue in the 2012 elections — as it should — everyone under the age of 55 is on notice that Mr. Ryan’s plan would impose heavy costs on them when they reach age 65.
Lost in the 21st Century 
Do you want to be at the mercy of government paper shufflers as you wait in your designer hospital gown for weeks on end? Medicaire became a political football from the 1970’s with Democrats huffing and puffing on the benefits they would add if elected. Now it is so bloated, wasteful, and corrupt with lax auditing of fraud clinics, it needs a real discipline by insurance companies to enforce what should have been done for decades. Do we need to allow billions to be siphoned by criminals every year for the sake of the seniors?
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