Budget, Medicare, Medicaid: Neediest and sickest Americans would pay the price under GOP budget plan
The principal target of Ryan’s plan is government healthcare spending — Medicare, Medicaid and the healthcare reform plan. That’s a reasonable place to aim any deficit-reduction plan, because that’s the area where costs are rising most sharply.
But his solutions are the antithesis of reasonable. They involve almost entirely throwing the neediest and sickest Americans out from under the government umbrella to fend for themselves. Medicare as we know it would be eradicated, the cost of Medicaid shifted largely to already hard-pressed state government, and a reform program designed to give tens of millions more Americans the protection of health insurance canceled outright.
Is this really the only path to deficit reduction?
Obama, to his credit, drew a philosophical line in the sand that his progressive supporters have been waiting to see for two years. Ryan’s vision, he said last week, “says America can’t afford to keep the promise we’ve made to care for our seniors…. It’s a vision that says up to 50 million Americans have to lose their health insurance in order for us to reduce the deficit.”
