Please folks, someone tell me I'm missing something here. Seriously, anyone, please! There are many here who know more about this subject than I, and I really hope somebody here can explain to me how this is all some kind of trick.
So, I eagerly await that.
In the meantime, TPM has the story. It gets ugly below the fold.
An unholy, unexpected political marriage between a Democratic senator and a House Republican firebrand will have implications beyond Capitol Hill — and could conceivably alter both the political tenor of the 2012 elections and the long-term policy fight over the future of Medicare.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) is teaming up with Paul Ryan, the House’s top budget guy and the author of the GOP’s controversial budget which proposes phasing out traditional Medicare and replacing it with a private plan. The two announced via The Washington Post that they’ll be teaming up on a different version of that Medicare plan — one that closely mimics plans offered by leading GOP presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, and a proposal authored by former Sen. Pete Domenici and former Clinton budget director Alice Rivlin, which loomed large in the Super Committee’s failed negotiations.
The move makes Wyden the first elected Democrat to endorse creating a premium-support system to compete with traditional fee-for-service Medicare, and for Ryan represents a de facto admission that his own plan was too radical to ever gain bipartisan support. That’s bound to affect how congressional and presidential candidates approach the issue, which will feature prominently in next year’s elections. But it raises a number of other questions, both about the merits of the policy and of the political calculus behind it.
Yeah. So - about that. That sucks! Right? What good can possibly come from this? Ron Wyden who, during the health care/insurance reform debate was well-meaning (or was he?) in championing a universal (though still private) system, is now willing to work with Paul Ryan on the initiation of Medicare's potential destruction. This is a recently published story, I hope that more information comes out regarding the various details or just debunking it altogether. But seriously again, what possible good can come from this? How big of a coalition can we expect to see supporting such a thing? We need Dems to know we won't support this, it is likely to be the beginning of an unnaturally early death spiral for one of the signature legislative achievements in the country's history. How these short-sighted fools can sit around and talk casually about tinkering carelessly with our Seniors' health care, I do not understand. I expect it from the Paul Ryans of the world, but Mr. Wyden you have some explaining to do.
Note this in that Wiki article on Wyden's health care bill
Medicaid participants are transitioned out of that program (the bill's co-sponsor, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), calls Medicaid a "caste system...that is unfair" to the poor and to taxpayers).[2]
Is he really crazy enough to believe that Ryan will work with him in good faith to make Medicare somehow
less of a "caste system"? Absolutely daft. Here's a lovely quote from the linked WSJ article,"People don't want the government in the driver's seat . . . They don't want the decisions (about their treatment) made in Capitol hearing rooms with a bunch of legislators in dark suits." So says Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden of the Healthy Americans Act, his plan for compromise in the polarized politics of healthcare reform." What a tool. People don't give a crap if the big bad government came up with something that works, as long as it
works properly! This guy's argument against improving health care is surprisingly simliar to what typical Republican disinformation on the subject dictates. Wow, turns out he's terrible on this issue in the guise of someone trying to 'help'. Good to know. Sad, but better to know now while there's still time to nip this in the bud.
Democrats NEED the Medicare issue to win elections. Need it. Without it, the case for Democrats is greatly weakened. This has to be pushed back on swiftly and severely, if it ends up being what it actually looks like now. Arg!!!