bapifar01: Republican Medicare proposal erodes Social Security

Saturday 28 May 2011

Republican Medicare proposal erodes Social Security

Forty Republican Senators and 235 Republican House members have voted not just to eliminate Medicare, eviscerate Medicaid, and give the wealthy and corporations even bigger tax breaks. They've also gone on record in support of eroding Social Security benefits.

That's analysis from Social Security Works and the Strengthen Social Security Campaign. Even though the Republican plan doesn't directly cut Social Security, the increased costs to seniors for Medicare would continuously erode the value of Social Security benefits, and by 2014, "19 years after the Medicare voucher begins?an average worker?s Social Security benefit is estimated to be worth less than their Medicare costs."

From the analysis [pdf]:

Seniors? health care costs will rise dramatically under this plan because of the fixed government contribution and the much higher costs of private health insurance compared with Medicare. Getting the kind of coverage that Medicare provides today would require the typical senior to spend half of their Social Security benefit on Medicare the first year the plan goes into effect, and 90 percent of their Social Security benefit within 16 years. Lower-income seniors would spend even higher percentages of their Social Security on health care....
...Under the plan, the typical senior?s costs for private insurance and associated out-of-pocket costs are projected to be $12,500 in 2022, almost $7,000 more than he or she would spend for premiums and out-of-pocket costs under the current Medicare program, according to Congressional Budget Office (CBO) data analyzed by the Kaiser Family Foundation....

The amount of a person?s Social Security benefit consumed by Medicare costs will grow because private insurers have significantly higher costs than the traditional Medicare program and because the voucher provided to seniors to purchase private coverage will not keep pace with rising medical costs. Though the voucher increases only 2.5 percent per year from 2022 to 2030, overall Medicare expenses under the Republican plan, which relies on more expensive private insurance, are expected to grow over 5 percent a year, according to CBO data.

This is just further evidence that any savings the Ryan plan might achieve will only be shifted to seniors and their families?and that's without including the massive Medicaid cuts it would make, cutting out long-term care for the frail elderly. It's not deficit-cutting plan, it's (as one well-known wag put it) "right-wing, social engineering."