Among all the really miserable things Paul Ryan's Trumpcare bill does to hurt people, what it does to Medicare might just be the most cynical. Ryan's had Medicare in his sights for basically his entire congressional career and now he has his big chance, by slipping it into the Dumpster fire of Trumpcare. By undermining Medicare's finances now, putting the program on shaky ground, he'll have his justification for swooping in for the kill later and privatizing it. That's the plan anyway, but requires everyone being so distracted by the rest of the horrible in the bill that we don't notice this. That’s not going to work.
By repealing a payroll tax on high earners that provided a critical additional revenue stream for the Medicare trust fund, the GOP's proposed American Health Care Act would speed up the fund's exhaustion by as many as three to four years, according to estimates from health care policy experts.
"It's clear, simple and undeniable that this bill would aversely affect the solvency of Medicare," Paul Van De Water, a Medicare expert at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities told TPM. […]
Andy Slavitt, acting administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services during the last two years of the Obama administration, has been ringing this bell loudly since the AHCA was made public Monday night.
"I think it's a smarter play for them to move Medicare closer to a crisis, try to get this bill done, and then build a case about why this crisis needs to be addressed," he told TPM in a Thursday phone interview.
Repealing the payroll tax hike now, a Brookings Institute report estimates, will cut four years off of the Medicare trust fund's solvency timeline.
Keep in mind, Trumpcare will make it much more expensive for those aged 50-64 out there, making it likelier that they don’t get the health care they need for retirement, making it likelier that they hit Medicare much sicker and will require more care and more expensive care. That’s possibly escaped Ryan’s notice, because he’s proved that he doesn’t really understand how insurance works, but it’s just as possible that it’s a feature of his plan rather than a bug. Because his number one priority is and always will be ending Medicare as we know it.