Rep. Paul Ryan on FOX News Sunday
The House Republican budget authored by Rep. Paul Ryan was the talk of the Sunday circuit, as Ryan and fellow Republicans tried to downplay the harm the proposal would do to just about everybody but the 1 percent. A particular focus, because of the political fall-out from last year's attempt at a budget, was Medicare. Here's Ryan on FOX News,
misleading viewers on just what it is his plan would do.
WALLACE: The Congressional Budget Office says under your plan, by 2030, average government spending on each new Medicare enrollee would be $2,000 less than status quo. Wouldn't you just -- factually, wouldn't you make seniors pay more for Medicare and their health care than they do now?
RYAN: Those same numbers apply to President Obama's healthcare law. Medicare grows at the same -- under our budget as it does under Obamacare. Here is the key critical difference: the president's health care puts 15 bureaucrats in charge of Medicare. We put 50 million seniors in charge of their Medicare. He is putting these bureaucrats, unelected, unaccountable, in charge of price controlling, which leads to denied care for seniors.
Chris Wallace got that absolutely right, the Ryan plan would shift costs to those 50 million seniors who would be "in charge" of having to pay much more for their health care. And as health care costs rise, Ryan's cap would mean that seniors would have to pay more and more to make up the difference between what the private sector charges and what medicare subsidizes.
Here's what else it would result in, according to the CBO: "reduced access to health care; diminished quality of care; increased efficiency of health care delivery; less investment in new, high-cost technologies; or some combination of those outcomes."