Matt Yglesias points to
this op-ed from freshman GOP Rep. Lou Barletta (PA), one of the Republicans who has faced hostile town hall crowds over his budget vote. In the op-ed, Barletta repeats the Republican lie that the so-called reform "will not reduce benefits for those 55 years old and up."
Yglesias debunks the lie:
One big problem is that while Barletta doesn’t think retired or near-retired people should have their benefits cut, he does believe in immediate cuts in programs for the poor. What’s more, Barletta seems to have believed Paul Ryan that Medicaid is just a program for poor people, ignoring the fact that most spending goes to middle class elderly and disabled people. So seniors will be hurt—and hard—by that aspect of the budget.
The other point is that privatizing Medicare will destroy it for everyone. Right now, one way that Medicare can afford such generous benefits is that it’s relatively stingy to doctors and other health care providers. For that reason, some doctors refuse to take Medicare patients. But Medicare represents such a large pool of patients that relatively few health care providers do this. Under the plan Barletta voted for, however, the pool of Medicare beneficiaries will shrink each and every year. That means the pool of doctors who are willing to treat Medicare patients will also shrink. That’s going to be bad for middle class Medicare beneficiaries.
And it's going to happen before those who are 55 become elderly and have only Medicare or Medicaid to rely upon. Republicans are cluing into how toxic this proposal is among senior citizens, and doing their damnedest to insist that it won't hurt them a bit, as if older citizens are so selfish as to not be invested in what happens to their children and their grandchildren (but default mode for Republicans is selfish, so I guess the explains that miscalculation). But the reality is—and older voters are smart enough to figure this one out—the hurt would start immediately if this budget passed.