LA Times Makes It Up on Chairman Ryan
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Saturday, 23 April 2011 22:56 |
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The LA Times told readers that:
"Congress is on its first recess since Republican leaders unveiled a plan to end the federal deficit by dramatically changing Medicare, cutting other government programs and reducing taxes."
Actually the Republicans never produced a plan to "end the federal deficit."
They produced a plan that promised large tax cuts but did not identify any of the taxes that would have to be raised to offset the lost revenue. This is like saying they had a plan to fly to moon because they said they would build a rocket. The whole point is the specifics. How would they build a rocket? How would they raise taxes to meet their revenue targets?
It would have also been worth mentioning that the Congressional Budget Office projections for the Ryan plan imply that it would increase the cost of buying Medicare equivalent insurance policies by $30 trillion over the program's 75-year planning period. This is approximately 6 times the size of the projected Social Security shortfall and comes to almost $100,000 in additional costs for every man, woman, and child in the country. This money would be a transfer from retirees to the insurance and health care industries under the Ryan plan.
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Ryan and the Heritage hacks treat Medicare like the minimum wage argument in reverse - as price cap regulation that suppresses what would be higher prices to alleviate claimed shortages, i.e. it should all look like Medicare Part D drugs where the government is prohibited from negotiating for prices for what it does buy in place of vouchers.
At the same time the Ryan plan claims to resolve with vouchers overpriced and oversold high technology health care in direct contradiction to projections in the opposite direction.
If the same logic was applied to minimum wages - a Ryan plan for vouchers that presumably allowed willing workers to go around the minimum wage and accept lower wages to allevitae a claimed surplus and get a job - they would instead get wages higher than the minimum - the same way insurers and health providers get higher than the 'Medicare minimum' under corrected projections.
In Ayn Rand terms, what's good for the John Galt Goose is good for the Wage Grub Gander.