Which sounds like analysis and which like editorializing to you?
Representative Paul Ryan is rebutting critics of his plan to turn Medicare into a “premium support” program, pointing to two existing programs that he says prove his approach would be better for beneficiaries. Don’t believe it.
The two programs he cites as prototypes — the insurance program for members of Congress and the Medicare prescription drug program — differ in critical respects from his proposal to sharply limit federal spending. The losers will be the beneficiaries who have to pay more.
Mr. Ryan’s plan would terminate the traditional Medicare program for everyone now under the age of 55 and give them instead a subsidy to buy health insurance from companies that would compete for their business on new insurance exchanges. The catch is that the premium subsidy would grow much more slowly than health care costs, leaving beneficiaries stuck with an ever increasing portion of the bill or forced to accept skimpier coverage.
Compared to this:
For Republicans, and for Paul Ryan, the point of the Ryan Medicare plan is to try and stop the bleeding of money that is coming out of the Medicare system and to try and bring down costs, essentially. Make it so Medicare can survive....
Paul Ryan is called oftentimes a "rising star" which to me is funny because actually he already is a star. I don't think he's a rising star anymore in the Republican party. He's the chairman of the House Budget Committee. He is a policy wonk. He likes numbers. He is very fiscally conservative and he's a midwesterner. He's someone who cares a lot about the national debt and about the deficit and has sworn to bring down both....
...The point is individuals don't actually pay that much out of pocket when they're on Medicare. Under the Ryan plan individuals would pay a lot more out of pocket. What the Ryan plan does to its advantage is government would pay less and Medicare would survive.
Democrats have not made a serious proposal yet about how to fix Medicare. They say one is coming. President Obama said one is coming, but we don't have anything on the table from them yet.
Ok, so that was sort of a trick question. They're both editorials on the Ryan plan, the first from
today's New York Times, properly found on their opinion page, and the second a
"Breaking News video from CNN, featuring CNN Radio's Lisa Desjardins purporting to explain the Republican budget plan authored by Paul Ryan.
You can't really get the contempt dripping from Ms. Desjardins in that last sentence when talking about the Democrats and Medicare from reading it. You need to listen. That contempt contrasts severely with her very apparent hero worship of Ryan, the midwestern deficit hero who is just trying to make sure that seniors finally pay their fair share of their medical costs.
The point is, CNN has no business presenting this as straight across analysis of the Ryan plan and why it's controversial.
