Fact: "Health-care costs don’t grow at the rate of inflation. Ever"
Why Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget plan is so flawed
By Ezra Klein, washingtonpost.com -- April 11, 2011
Health-care costs don’t grow at the rate of inflation. Ever. Previously, Ryan acknowledged that. His Roadmap capped federal contributions between inflation and the actual cost of medical care. He then developed a more bipartisan version of the idea with Alice Rivlin, [...] That one was capped at the growth of GDP plus 1 percentage point.
Both targets were far more plausible than the fantasy target Ryan is now using.
So why the switch? He has not said. I suspect he couldn’t make the numbers add up without tax increases. The problem now, however, is that his numbers don’t add up at all.
Fact: Ryan's current estimate of the growth of Health-care costs "is much, much too low."
[Alice] Rivlin — a budget hawk’s budget hawk — has abandoned the proposal that Ryan says she helped write. “The growth rate is much, much too low,” she says.
Fact: The original researcher of the Ryan Budget Plan NO LONGER BACKS THE PLAN ... because:
[Alice] Rivlin’s worry is that Ryan’s plan won’t control costs so much as shift them to seniors. And the CBO agrees with her. It concluded that Ryan’s privatization plan would actually add to Medicare’s costs.
Fact: The CBO concludes the Ryan’s Privatization Plan does not cut the Cost of Medicare, but would actually ADD to Cost of Medicare, in the long run.
Alice Rivlin, founded the Congressional Budget Office and directed the Office of Management and Budget under Bill Clinton.
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Fact: Ryan's plan is based on Heritage Foundation data, including a very rosy estimate of an Unemployment Rate under his plan of 2.8%
10 concluding thoughts on Ryan’s budget
By Ezra Klein, washingtonpost.com -- April 06, 2011
8) The Heritage Foundation has done itself some serious damage: [as Paul Krugman discovered ...]
Memory Hole Alert
Paul Krugman, nytimes.com -- April 6, 2011
You can see the unemployment forecast, with the amazing 2.8 percent prediction, in the fourth set of figures. [tables from that Heritage report that’s the basis for the Ryan plan.]
[... the next day] they [Heritage Foundation] took the offending number out.
Fact: Heritage Foundation data has scrubbed the data, of that very overly optimist estimate of the Unemployment rate: 2.8% (which Paul Ryan built his Revenue projections on.)
Fact: Paul Ryan has NOT scrubbed corrected his "Path to Poverty" Plan yet, to account for this new Heritage Crater, right in the middle of his "very rosy revenue estimate" numbers.
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Fact: The Traditional Media, has forgotten how to report Facts.
Fact: The Traditional Media, would rather report GOP Fictions.
Myths like: MORE Tax Cuts WILL Create Jobs
One Question: Where are the Facts, to back up that worn out GOP Myth?