Just saw this article on NBC News and thought it clearly outlines the biggest problem with the Romney/Ryan plan for Medicare:
Yet according to Marsha Gold, a health-care expert at Mathematica Policy Research, the big difference between the two is this: Medicare Advantage, like Medicare, is a defined benefit (where the government guarantees a level of coverage), while the Romney-Ryan plan transforms Medicare into a defined contribution (where the government decides what it will pay).
Romney says his plan is a good plan, like Medicare Advantage, ooops:
Under Medicare Advantage, the Kaiser Family Foundation says, Medicare ends up paying the private plans MORE per enrollee -- about 7% more -- than the fee-for-service program does.
"It's a wasteful, inefficient program and always has been," Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) told the Washington Post in 2009. It's "stuffing money into the pockets of private insurers, and it doesn't provide any better benefits to anybody."
Medicare Advantage was the program initiated by the Bush administration, and the Obama administration has taken steps to realign this program such that the waste, fraud and inefficiency of the program is corrected. Yet, if Romney/Ryan were elected we would end up with a Medicare program that would waste more money while providing far less services to seniors, while at the same time costing seniors MORE money.
The G.A.O. has also weighed in on the Medicare Advantage program and found:
The commission said payments to private plans, including the bonuses, were still about 7 percent higher than what the government would pay for similar beneficiaries in the traditional Medicare program.
If we want to see the Romney/Ryan plan for Medicare in action all that is needed is a quick review of Medicare Advantage. And remember that the Romney/Ryan plan would be Medicare Advantage on steroids.
And the GOP would like us to believe that somehow running on their Medicare plan is a "winner" for them. I kid you not.