Monday, August 13, 2012
Congressman Paul Ryan is smart, boyishly handsome and comes from a well-to-do Catholic family.
He's the kind of guy your grandma would love and encourage you to emulate.
But the knock against Rep. Ryan, the person who'll fill the No. 2 slot on the GOP's presidential ticket, is that Ryan would make life hard for grannies across the U.S.
Ryan is best known as the architect of an austere budget plan that conservatives have heralded as the preferable alternative to President Barack Obama's.
The centerpiece of the Ryan budget involves scrapping Medicare, the federal health care program for the elderly, and replacing it with a voucher system in 2022. Critics say Ryan's plan would cause health-care costs for senior citizens to skyrocket because it won't keep up with inflation or rising insurance costs--a contention that Obama's reelection campaign has already started to deploy since presumptive presidential candidate Gov. Mitt Romney unveiled Ryan as his running mate Saturday in Virginia.
Romney's campaign said the former Massachusetts governor would craft his own budget if he's elected president.
The debate over the Ryan budget heats up as a new report suggests Mississippi is already a tough place for retirees.
The website Bankrate.com lists Mississippi as one of the 10 worst states in which to retire. Other southern states, including Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas and Georgia also appear on the dubious list.
Bankrate.com performed its analysis based on crime rates, percentage of retirees living below the poverty line and life expectancy. Mississippi had a crime rate of 3,254.7 crimes per 100,000 people, 12 percent of retirees living in poverty and an average life expectancy of 74.8 years.
Comments
M_Riddell 11 years, 8 months ago
If Mississippi is so bad for retirement, who do we have so many "Certified Retirement Communities" in the state? Theoretically, cost of living is lower in Mississippi than most other states, so you would think that retirement money would go further. It's unfair to compare Manhattan, NY to Jackson, MS, but I can't see that it would be easier (monetarily) to live in Austin, TX or Tampa, FL than in Hattiesburg, MS (a certified retirement city).
tstauffer 11 years, 8 months ago
Apparently "certified retirement community" is an economic development designation used in six states in the country, according to http://www.topretirements.com/communi...">TopRetirements.com. Mississippi's system is proctored by http://www.visitmississippi.org/homet...">Hometown Mississippi Retirement, which looks to be under MDA.
So... nothing wrong with that, but it's not a comparison to other parts of the country, just an in-state program to promote retirement, probably for reasons similar to those you mention. (Hey, I could see retiring to Ocean Springs or a condo overlooking the Gulf. ;)
brjohn9 11 years, 8 months ago
To be fair, Medicare under Ryan's plan actually would be indexed to inflation. However, that increase is not nearly enough to keep pace with the rise in health care costs, which have been growing at about 5 to 6 percent per year.
Again, Ryan's plan only pretends to address a serious problem, which is the rise in health care costs. The rise in health care costs drives future deficits. Ryan reduces those deficits by shifting the increased costs to seniors. That solves nothing.
Ryan is fond of saying that we must control Medicare spending or it will bankrupt the country, but he misses the point. The country would be just as broke under his plan, because health care costs will swallow up an ever-growing percentage of GDP if they continue to rise at present rates. By 2050, health care spending would consume close to 50 percent of GDP. Ryan wants to shift health care spending to the private sector, but that wouldn't make any difference. Private health care costs have been rising even faster than public costs. In any case, the private health insurance market would completely collapse if costs rose so high. In truth, health care spending will never make up 50 percent of GDP because the economy would become fatally dysfunctional long before costs rose to that level. But that remains true regardless of what we do with Medicare. Of course, Ryan believes that competition will drive down costs, despite the fact that this has not worked in the private insurance market so far.
Pretending to solve our health care problem by shifting more spending to the private sector is just a shell game. Ryan's plan does not offer a real way to control health care costs.
tstauffer 11 years, 8 months ago
When you say "Medicare" would be indexed to inflation, aren't we actually talking about a voucher toward the purchase of private insurance?
Are we certain that these older folks are going to be able to buy insurance for the amount on the voucher, regardless of what it's indexed to?
I honestly don't know -- would the insurance company be able to change rates based on the insured person's history, health, etc.?
My reading is that this would essentially turn Medicare into a discount coupon for over-the-counter insurance, but maybe buried in the proposal is some requirement that the insurance company has to offer the insurance at a rate covered by the voucher? (Making it more of a Groupon? :)
brjohn9 11 years, 8 months ago
Yes, that's an important clarification. Under Ryan's plan, Medicare vouchers would be indexed to inflation. Seniors would have to buy whatever private insurance the voucher and their own income enabled them to afford. Assuming that health care costs continue to rise, the vouchers would soon be completely inadequate for purchasing private insurance. There is no stipulation that private insurance must provide policies equal to the amount of the vouchers. In fact, Ryan himself has said that the point is to force seniors to have "skin in the game," which only applies if costs exceed the amount of the voucher. It's one of Ryan's favorite Orwellian turns of phrase for giving someone the shaft. Another is "broaden the base," which is double-speak for "increase taxes on the poor." That is not hyperbole on my part--the phrase means exactly that.
BestCommentEver 11 years, 8 months ago
The only problem with indexing it to inflation and population growth is that health care costs go up at pace each year that far exceeds inflation growth and population growth - which means elderly and disabled people on Medicare and Medicaid will end up paying more under his plan.
brjohn9 11 years, 8 months ago
It still amazes me that anyone takes Ryan or his plan seriously. His plan would limit discretionary spending to 3.75 percent of GDP by 2050. That figure is preposterous. As the CBO noted in its report on the Ryan plan, such spending has never fallen below 8 percent since World War II. Moreover, this figure includes defense spending, which currently makes up about 4.7 percent of GDP. Ryan actually wants to increase defense spending. As a result, defense spending would consume all of the discretionary budget, http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=...">meaning the end of "everything from veterans’ programs to medical and scientific research, highways, education, nearly all programs for low-income families and individuals other than Medicaid, national parks, border patrol, protection of food safety and the water supply, law enforcement, and the like."
Ryan's numbers don't add up, and his plan is not even remotely realistic. But somehow, much of the media elite have decided that he is a courageous wunderkind. Don't buy the hype. The clothes have no emperor.
tstauffer 11 years, 8 months ago
@brjohn9 Agreed. Great stuff in the Atlantic this weekend showing, in chart form, how Ryan wants to shrink government back to its 1950 share of GDP -- before we had Medicare.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/a...">http://www.theatlantic.com/business/a...
And he does it all by raising the effective tax rates for the bottom 30% of Americans while nearly undoing the taxes of the wealthy altogether -- Romney's rate would have been down to 0.82% for 2010, because Ryan wants to lose capital gains completely.
It defies logic. It's utterly ideological... And sort of weird. If somebody told me Scientology was somehow behind this it would actually start to make more sense.
BestCommentEver 11 years, 8 months ago
Both Obama's Medicare actions and Ryan's plan cut money from Medicare. The difference is that Ryan wants to put it on the backs of seniors and disabled while Obama put it on the backs of providers in paying them less. It only stands to reason why doctors are against the Affordable Health Care Act just as it only stands to reason why seniors and the disabled are against Ryan's plan.
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