I have just read Medicare: What can we do about it? and a good many of the comments. As usual, I am left with the impression that the moonbat left here at Kos is bound and determined to NOT support a rational course of action so that they can continue to whiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine about the current disaster while flogging their supposed "superior" intellect. For most of outer moonbatia "single payer" is a litmus test into the inner circle of true "progressives". Any other ideas are a "capitulation" to the rightarded and utter blasphemy.
The reality is that straight up Medicare Buy In will SAVE the American Middle Class approximately 17% on what they currently pay for medical insurance. I am acutely aware that moonbatia wants to "tax the rich" so as to provide free Popsicles to all the poor people. But that is NOT a strategy that will drag the vast middle into the voting booths thinking DEMOCRAT. When you tell that vast middle that you can actually SAVE Medicare as we know it and at the same time dramatically reduce THEIR medical costs WITHOUT additional borrowing or taxation, THAT is when you have a stone cold winner.
The question is not one of "Do we do 'Single Payer", or "PPACA" or private rip off". The proper question is "Why hasn't the president and the congress enlisted the GAO and/or the CRS in producing a report on the savings that can be had by simply ALLOWING the people to use a NON_TAX_SUBSIDIZED and OPTIONAL Medicare Buy In for their medical insurance needs?". For My own part I did the current Dkosopedia entry for "Medicare Buy In" and I will be calling left leaning talk shows like Hartman, Goldman, Schultz, and Rhodes to encourage them to make an issue of this particular lack of congressional professionalism.
For those who believe that the matter can be better advanced in some other way, then I will be pleased to consider it and to defend my own particular methodology. ASKING your representative to do something is a waste of time. We TELL them what to do and we use the news media and the talk shows and the blogosphere to light a fire under them. "call your congressman" is crap.
"Medicare Buy In" can be and should be the stake driven through heart of the Republican party.
Thank you Paul Ryan!