Abolishing Medicare = “Saving Medicare”

Let’s remember what this is about. Using the deficits created by the financial crisis to eliminate Medicare, Medicaid and if at all possible, Social Security too.

It’s actually quite analogous to what happened in Wisconsin over the last couple months. The state faced a serious budget shortfall. Cuts were necessary on various fronts. Some of those certainly had to come from the state’s public workers. Bigger contributions to health care coverage, pensions, etc. The state’s public employees union basically agreed. But in addition to the budget retrenchment that was necessary, at least to some degree, Governor Walker said, “Hey, as long as we’ve got a budget situation why not just abolish the unions and say it was necessary to balance the budget? We’ll never get a better chance to shut them down?”

Rep. Ryan, an ally of Gov. Walker, is trying pretty much the same thing.

Seems like there are a few Dems actually identifying the Ryan Plan as abolishing Medicare.

Sen. Baucus (D) says no abolishing Medicare as long as I’m Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

Great shots from the epic 1995-96 government shutdown:

Medicare is such a popular program and people are so against abolishing it that you have to really work hard to flub the debate and obscure what its enemies are trying to do to actually let it get abolished if you’re trying to save it. But congressional Democrats and the White House do seem to be giving it the old college try.

So here goes. What the Republicans are proposing are not cuts. Some level of cuts and/or cost containment in Medicare are necessary because medical inflation is growing so quickly. But these aren’t cuts. They’re using a temporary budget crisis and the need to slow the rate of Medicare costs over long run simply to abolish the program. That’s a bait and switch. It’s the medical side equivalent of the “private accounts” bamboozle that President Bush used in 2005 to try to phase out Social Security. Read More

Yesterday, I told you about the Dem strategist who went on Hardball and somehow managed to laud Rep. Ryan’s plan to abolish Medicare as “courageous” if also “political stupid”. Well, now we have the video of Dem strategist Steve McMahon. Check it out after the jump … Read More

“Adult conversation” = Phasing out Medicare and replacing it with a system of vouchers to help seniors buy private health insurance.

With negotiations still at a standoff, House Republicans are preparing a one-week stop gapping spending measure to keep the government open for a single week. But the price is roughly half a trillion dollars of program cuts on an annualized basis. So the aim is present Democrats and the White House with cuts they can’t accept and force them to be the ones who ‘shut down the government.’

This is being presented as a clever ploy. And perhaps it is. But if my memory serves me right this is actually pretty similar to the ploy they used in 1995 and which worked so well for them.

Speaker Boehner to distribute guidance to House members with protocols on what to do in event of government shutdown.

Why on earth did the Democrat speaking for the Democrats just now on Hardball say it was “courageous” but “politically stupid” for Paul Ryan to put up a plan to abolish Medicare and other federal social programs? That’s the best he can do? “Courageous”? That’s simply amazing. If ordinary people who look forward to being able to rely on Medicare once they retire can’t even get advocates who don’t think it’s “courageous” to try to abolish Medicare, why are Democrats even in this game?

You can respect people’s contrary opinions. But presumably it’s wrong to abolish Medicare because it’s wrong. And that Dems are the party who believes it’s wrong.

It’s a separate matter that so many people are creating this cult about Paul Ryan that he’s some sort of visionary leader when he’s just putting forward policies that the right of the GOP has been advocating for decades. But really, even the Democrats think that this is “courageous”? I guess in a way it was courageous for the Delaware GOP to run Christine O’Donnell.

Has this guy even understood what the policy is? How courageous would it be to abolish Social Security. Sometimes things are politically risky because they’re profoundly bad ideas.

Simply amazing.