Berkeley Economist Brad Delong On Ryan's Medicare Proposals

[TomCADem]

I wonder what will all those senior citizen Tea Partiers say when they are faced with the facts?

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2011/04/cbo-projections-of-the-ryan-plan-for-medicare.html

If I am calculating this right, under current law the CBO projects that the U.S. government will spend $35,000 year-2010 dollars to cover a 75-year old Medicare patient in 2050.

Under the Ryan plan, however, the CBOI projects that a 75-year old Medicare patient in 2050 will have to spend $52,000 year-2010 dollars to buy a Medicare-equivalent plan in 2050. Of this, Medicare will reimburse the patient for--a mere $10,000.

Plus there are all the Medicare copays that 75 year olds will have to pay...

Why the $15,000 difference? Because without Medicare's bargaining power on the other side for-profit hospitals and for-profit doctors will charge more, and because of the extraordinary overhead of private health insurance companies as they spend trillions trying to figure out how to craft their policies so as not to pay for sick people.

[flamingdem]

1. It's good someone with a brain is breaking this down

Logic is in short supply these days

[Brigid]

2. Teabaggers hate it when . . .

people who actually know what they're talking about start coming out with those nasty things called facts. :eyes:

[upi402]

3. So a $35K expense would become be a $52K expense, but yields a $10K value?

zat right?

[dkf]

5. No. The value of the Medicare benefits costing 35k now would cost 52k

But Ryans benefit only kicks in 10k

[dkf]

4. Which goes to the unsustainability of providing the benefit and the unsustainability of our health

Care system.

How much are premiums going to need to be to sustain $52,000 worth of yearly benefits? Or if it's not in premiums what will payroll taxes look like?

[JDPriestly]

6. What would you prefer?

Keep American troops in far-flung places like Afghanistan, Japan, Iraq, Germany, etc.?

Or keep you grandparents or parents or maybe yourself alive? (assuming they are living)

Where are you values? And, of course I am talking to those who think that Ryan's plan is good and that Medicare for 75-year-olds is not worth the trouble.

[dkf]

7. It's not a matter of defense or education or the EPA, it's all of them.

Medicare as it stands will suck up all discretionary spending. It's not viable as is. As far as I am concerned it is single payer with rationing or bust.

[JDPriestly]

8. Your plan will not work.

Older people do not have income from which to pay single payer premiums. You have no idea how little money most older people have.

Your plan will kill older people -- and let them die in pain.

I have to add that right now, older people who saved money while they were working are not getting any income from their savings. The low interest rates insure that.

Older people have not complained much during this economic recession. That is because we are mostly concerned about our children. But the fact is that we generally can't get jobs and don't have income beyond Social Security. Very few in our generation and among the baby boomers have pensions.

The baby boomers and thus of us who are a few years older than they are supported both our children and our parents and grandparents in style. Now we are going to need support. It will be a heavy burden, but we paid extra Social Security taxes so that heavy burden would be lighter. If the government, and especially the Bush administration wasted the money in Iraq, we older people should not suffer.

I think that we need to rethink estate taxes for the very rich. At a person's death is the time to take back the money that is paid into Social Security and Medicare for those who really did not need those benefits.