In between all of the boos at Paul Ryan's appearance last week before the AARP, he said this.
"I think you might have heard the word 'voucher' earlier today, right?" Ryan asked the crowd, referring to the president's speech. "Let me explain. That's a poll-tested word basically designed to scare today's seniors. [...]"
Let's just rewind a bit, to Paul Ryan on Medicare in
2009.
What I do is propose a lot of different solutions. [...] Means testing our entitlement programs, optional person retirement accounts for Social Security, converting Medicare to a defined contribution, sort of a voucher system, extra assistance for low-income, means testing higher income. [...]
But wait, there's more in 2010:
Medicaid, let's give the states, the laboratories of democracy, the ability to customize their programs to meet their people's needs. I would also say to people, "Look, we're going to give you a voucher to get private health insurance," we're going to give protection to people with pre-existing conditions, and we're going to let them go into the marketplace and get private health insurance like everybody else. [...]
So they "poll-tested" Ryan's favorite solution for the poors and found out that people really hate it. It's not the word that's the problem, Mr. Ryan, it's your ideas.