WASHINGTON DC - If it looks like a voucher plan and acts like a voucher plan, it is a voucher plan. But don’t tell that to Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, who like former Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas before him, is trying to rebrand a bad idea that will turn Medicare into a voucher program. This time he’s reverting to the voucher plan’s original name, “premium support."
Ryan says his Medicare proposal is based on a plan that he put together last year with former Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Alice Rivlin. What he doesn’t say is that the proposal has been described as a voucher plan by CBO, a slew of fellow Republicans, the national media and the authors themselves. Regardless of whether or not the voucher goes to the insurance company or the Medicare beneficiary, it is still a voucher.
* Both Ryan and Rivlin referred to their plan as relying on vouchers for Medicare in a July, 2010 panel at the Brookings Institution (p. 23-24).
* The preliminary analysis of the Ryan-Rivlin proposal by the CBO refers to the plan as a “voucher" proposal seven times, including in the first line of the analysis: “People who turn 65 in 2021 or later years would not enroll in the current Medicare program but instead would receive a voucher with which to purchase private health insurance."
* Monday’s Wall Street Journal : “The plan would essentially end Medicare, which now pays most of the health-care bills for 48 million elderly and disabled Americans, as a program that directly pays those bills."
* Among those referring to the Ryan-Rivlin plan as a voucher plan:
-Michael F. Cannon (Cato Institute)
-June O’Neill (former CBO director)
-National Review
-Weekly Standard
-American Enterprise Institute
* Spin flashback: In 2003, Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas ditched the name “premium support" when it became clear he meant vouchers, instead renaming it “comparative cost adjustment." Old euphemism tricks never die.
Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Sander Levin (D-MI) said: “Ryan’s Medicare voucher plan is set up to slash benefits for retirees and people with disabilities. And there’s no way he can spin his way out of that disastrous web."
Ways and Means Health Subcommittee Ranking Member Pete Stark (D-CA) said: “Paul Ryan can call his budget plan whatever he wants, but the fact remains that it will destroy the Medicare program, turning seniors’ care back over to the private insurance industry -- the very industry that wouldn't cover senior citizens and forced the creation of Medicare in the first place."
