The House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady (R-TX) told the Associated Press that Republicans plans to overhaul Medicare as early as next year.
Brady joins a growing number of voices in the House of Representatives who have signaled interest in changing the program even as Senate Republicans have pushed back such talk.
“Democrat tactics of ‘Mediscare’ have been around a long time. They’ve stopped working,” Brady told The Associated Press in a story published Friday. “Voters have figured out Republicans want to save Medicare for the long term, and they know that those who say everything’s just fine with it aren’t leveling with them.”
Brady, however, remained vague about what exactly he wanted to do. While House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) has boldly doubled down on his own proposals for to privatize Medicare or what he calls “premium support,” Brady was less clear about what he wanted to do.
“I envision 2017 as taking steps, small, in preparing for larger steps to save Medicare for the long term,” Brady told the AP.
Past Ryan’s plans over the years have shown a variety of options. The early ones showed Ryan phasing out traditional Medicare over time and moving to a health care market where every elderly person got a set amount of money to buy their health insurance. Health care advocates and Democrats worry that kind of system would force the burden of rising health care costs onto seniors. Ryan’s later plans preserved traditional medicare as an option for people to buy with their vouchers, but experts are unclear if the proper protections would actually protect the integrity of the program. Either option would fundamentally change Medicare as it’s currently structured.
Democrats are already vehemently rejecting anything resembling privatization and have said they plan to make the nomination of Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) to be HHS Secretary a referendum on his attempts to privatize Medicare.
It is still unclear what President-elect Trump thinks about privatization. He campaigned on a platform not to touch seniors’ health care.
Don’t foolishly think Medicare is safe, just 'cause some Republican senators appear hesitant about taking on its destruction in 2017.
Going forward, with (mostly) far-right Republicans in control of Congress, with a dangerous impulse-driven menace in the Oval Office, and with darlings of the Federalist Society soon to dominate the Supreme Court, nothing is safe in America. Or in the world. Or, indeed, on or under the land or in the waters or in the air surrounding this planet.
Ah, so that’s the scam: we need to save Medicare.
Let’s just apply this to Confederate states, as part of a 2-for-1 deal when you take away their healthcare. As it already is a petri dish, the rest of us can look on and take notes to see if it works. Like we do with Kansas.
Sorry, Lauren. The GOP is not planning to “change” Medicare. They are planning to DO AWAY with it. Abrogate it, disappear it, assassinate it, kill it, make it an ex-entitlement, make it pine for the fiords.
all the intelligent knowing Republicans explaining how Medicare is in “trouble” need only publish a power point of projections and audit the program of course the elephant in the room is the money the Guvt borrowed lets see it all tell the american people who pay their money into Medicare exactly the numbers Brady or shut up one or the other tell it all!
When the doctor tells you that the diagnosis will “change your life”, it’s not good news.