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August 16, 2012 10:49 PM UTC

Romney All Over The Map On Medicare, "Ryan Plan"

  • 29 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

Since Rep. Paul Ryan joined the GOP’s presumptive presidential ticket last week, the question of whether Ryan’s nominal boss Mitt Romney supports Ryan’s controversial budget plans from his time in Congress has not been clearly answered. The latest information to be had on the subject comes from this interview yesterday with Wisconsin’s WBAY-TV:

Action 2 News: Your senior campaign advisor said Sunday if the Ryan Budget would have come to your desk you would have signed it. In a January debate you called it a proposal that was absolutely right on. So I guess why are you distancing yourself from at least the Medicare portion of the Ryan Budget?

Romney: Actually, Paul Ryan and my plan for Medicare, I think, is the same if not identical–it’s probably close to identical. [Pols emphasis] Our plan is for people 55 years of age and older. There’s no change. The only change I’d mention for 55 or older is we’d restore the $817 billion President Obama took out of the Medicare trust fund…

Action 2 News: Critics, though, will say while you say you’re on the same page as Congressman Ryan you are providing no examples of the differences – one you mention is the more than $700 billion being cut.

Romney: Well, I’m not sure what critics you’re referring to, but what I can tell you is Paul Ryan in joining my Presidential team is on board with my policy… The place there’s a big difference is between myself and Paul Ryan and the President.

What can we glean from this interview? Well, depending on whether or not Romney stands by these remarks in the coming weeks–and of course there’s no way of guaranteeing that–he’s made a significant step by endorsing Paul Ryan’s budget plans as “nearly identical” to his own. That would presumably include Paul’s plans to replace Medicare with a voucher-type program, but he doesn’t say. But Romney says he would not “cut” the roughly $700 billion from Medicare that both Obama’s and Ryan’s proposals assume will be saved as part of “Obamacare.”

And again, these are not benefit cuts, but cost savings from waste reduction and providers.

In short, Mitt Romney has apparently embraced the privatization component of Paul Ryan’s budget, but not the cost saving agreed on by both Paul Ryan and President Obama. The inherent conflict in this approach is resolved by asserting that Ryan works for Romney now, and would follow Romney’s lead. Meaning Romney is embracing the least popular aspect of Ryan’s plan, while spurning the cost savings on which there is already bipartisan agreement.

Of course, none of this rhetoric may have a shred of value since Romney so often changes his positions as soon as his campaign realizes they are politically harmful. Republicans are already hard at work distancing both Romney and Ryan from the worst of the “Ryan Plan,” arguing that Medicare privatization is an “old proposal” of Ryan’s (2011 of course being the distant past).

What we don’t see here is anything voters can trust.

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29 thoughts on “Romney All Over The Map On Medicare, “Ryan Plan””

  1. 1. Voters know who is truly committed to fiscal security.

    2. You’re conceding that Obama indeed cut hundreds of billions from Medicare. It doesn’t matter how you explain that away, voters aren’t going to care. You’ve admitted that Obama is being dishonest.

    3. Voters KNOW that Ryan works for Romney, not vice versa. You laugh that off but it’s true.

    Medicare must be reformed and strengthened for future generations. Romney-Ryan has the cred to do it, Obama doesn’t.

    1. what’s wrong with the Republican / R-Ayn plan — is it the impossible math or the abysmal polling?  

      Ok, we all already know it was the abysmal polling . . . you guys are worse than Barbie whenever it comes to your math.

      Willard says, whatever he says even when it contradicts what he said yesterday . . . I guess you gotta love him anyway, that’s why they pay you.

      Good work on the “security” messaging, even though you’re an idiot shill, you still know who pays you for your tricks.

      The National Republican Congressional Committee has warned all its candidates that whenever the subject comes up, they are to avoid mentioning “entitlement reform,” or “privatization,” or “every option is on the table.” Instead, the keywords are: “strengthen, secure, save, preserve, protect.”

      So I suspect Romney and Ryan would say that they want to change the current system in order to strengthen, secure, save, preserve and protect your future health care. Which will involve a lot of choices, even though every option is not on the table. Totally not.

      Basically, the Republican message is that it’s Barack Obama who is trying to destroy Medicare and that they will save it.

      http://nyti.ms/N4Kt99

      PS. Glad to see you got to sleep in a little today after your rough night on the streets last night.  

      2. This is a point that Democrats and Republicans agree on, except in election years.

        The current benefits scheme is unsustainable. Republicans want real cost controls to protect and strengthen the system, to ensure it is available to future generations. I believe the Ryan plan would do that, even if it requires a little skin in the game from recipients.

        These are the same Democrats who scream bloody murder when Medicaid recipients are asked to pay fifty dollars for the thousands of dollars of coverage they receive. It’s why working families who pay their bills resent you so much.

        2. You have no concept of what Bankruptcy means.

          Republicans want to defund Medicare. Democrats want to fund it. Funding medical care for old people is a policy, a mechanism of social insurance so poor people and sick people are taken care of.

          We pay into insurance so we get benefits out.

          Bankruptcy is a legal method of folding a business in which you figure out who are the creditors, and then the business is permitted to get out of contracts. For example:

          Bain buys up a company with a large pension obligation (i.e. contract with the workers for their retirement). Then they take out huge loans against the money in the pension fund. The company goes bankrupt, the Court permits the pension contract to be broken, and the money is taken from the pension plan to pay back Bain and the creditors.

          1. Semantics aside, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Medicare is paying out more than it is taking in and will exhaust its reserves unless something is done. Obama, Paul Ryan, and Romney all agree. You’re in denial.

            The difference is, Romney and Ryan want to fix the system now, and Obama kicks the can down the road.

              1. Oh noes!  Those ones need more.  They have dancing horses to take care of!  13% !!!  My GODS have you no mercy???  Willard is TAXED ENOUGH ALREADY!  

                Broaden the tax base–make more people pay more, while fewer people will pay less.  Its fair because they are JOB CREATORS and unless you do as they say they ain’t gonna create no JOBS for you.  

                So there.  

                Vulture/Voucher 2012

              2. Same with AGOP re: the reserve fund.  Medicare taxes don’t have a wage limit.

                But for once he got something right, kinda.  The Medicare tax doesn’t cover the costs of Medicare; it hasn’t for a very long time.  As of next year, there will be changes to the Medicare tax to increase the tax rate for higher income individuals to 3.8% (was 2.9%, half paid by employee, half by employer), and to include investment income in that tax; adjustments are possible in the future under the new law.  I don’t know if that’s sufficient to cover the shortfall, but it’s already been passed in to law, so this might amount to Republican concern trolling (or more likely ignorance of the new law – I was surprised when I looked it up…)

          2. remarkably like Willard’s (R-Ayn’s) plan here.  Break the Medicare contract and give some more tax cuts to the members of Willard’s Billionaire Boys Club . . .

            Maybe we should start taking this asshole at (some of) his word . . .  

    2. I think the point is that Romney doesn’t even know what he is “truly committed” to, so how can you/voters possibly know.

      And if you know, which is pretty remarkable, you might want to tell him so he stops changing his mind every four seconds.

    3. You’ve got your mind made up, and damn the facts.

      1. If voters know who’s really committed to fiscal security, then Obama is assured re-election.

      2. I’ll concede that Obama saved $700 billion in government expenditures for Medicare without cutting benefits for Medicare beneficiaries.

      3. Voters might know that Ryan works for Romney, but Romney has been using Ryan’s work in formulating his budget plan.  It’s Ryan’s philosophy that’s driving the campaign’s fiscal policy.

    4. because he won’t say.  Voters do know from Romney’s record that nothing he says or stands for has much of a shelf life ( you may insert standard R reply about how Obama doesn’t keep his promises here. Jist being helpful).  

      As for Pols conceding anything please reread this part.

      And again, these are not benefit cuts, but cost savings from waste reduction and providers.

      The Ryan plan doesn’t save anything.  Just shifts the cost to seniors who have already paid in all their lives.  The Obama plan doesn’t cost anyone a dime in benefits.  It’s not that hard to understand which is why none of you, especially Romney, want to talk about it in any concrete way.

      Romney’s pitch on this and everything else is “vote for me and I’ll tell you my plans after I’m elected.” Since his record is for being for and against everything, being everywhere from liberal to moderate to conservative on numerous issues, just how much trust on this or anything else do you think he’s really capable of inspiring?  Wait.  We know we can always trust him to take from and tax the middle and poor to give to the extremely rich and to fight to avoid taxes personally and for the rest of his .001% cohort.  He’s very consistent on that.

      I say let’s just skip finding out his plans and lowering his tax rate, if there’s any room left to lower it further, by electing Obama instead.  

            1. then you wouldn’t have said they weren’t the same yesterday, in contradiction of your boss.

              Your man’s campaign is floundering, and I believe you are in denial of that.

  2. Paul Krugman goes through the details of the Ryan plan for government spending:

    Ryan basically proposes three big things: slashing Medicaid, cutting taxes on corporations and high-income people, and replacing Medicare with a drastically less well funded voucher system. These concrete proposals would, taken together, actually increase the deficit for the first decade and beyond.

    All the claims of major deficit reduction therefore rest on the magic asterisks. In that sense, this isn’t even a plan, it’s just a set of assertions.

    I would add that the purpose of Medicare Vouchers is to force old people to buy health insurance from private companies.

    First of all, insurance companies don’t want to insure old people (they have a habit of expensive healthcare needs). Secondly, private insurance has 33% overhead whereas Medicare has 5% overhead.

  3. Outsourced to Brad deLong:

    Obama’s Affordable Care Act cuts payments to Medicare providers by $716 billion in total over the next ten years and redirects the money to cover seniors’ prescription drugs, public health, and to pay for coverage for the currently uninsured. Ryan’s plan cuts payments to Medicare providers by $716 billion in total over the next ten years, uses the savings to fund tax cuts for rich, and then cuts payments to Medicare beneficiaries by $3 trillion in years 11 through 20.

    Romney’s plan used to bankrupt the Medicare Trust Fund in 2016, and repeal ObamaCare to eliminate the $716 billion cut to Medicare providers and impose a cut to benefits for Medicare beneficiaries.

    But now Romney’s Medicare plan is “the same, if not identical–probably close to identical” as Ryan’s.

    If you are confused, join the club. If you don’t like any provision in Romney’s Medicare plan, wait an hour: it will change.

    To emphasize: the $716 billion is not a cut to BENEFITS, it is a cut to PROVIDER PAYMENTS. In other words, they save money by eliminating waste, fraud and cost-shifting.

    Incidently, Where did the $716 billion number come from?

    Answer: CBO Analysis if the ACA were repealed. Outsourced to Mahablog:

    Boehner had requested a revision on the budget impact of repealing the ACA.

    So the CBO wrote back and said, dude, repealing Obamacare will cost us big time. It would add $109 billion to the federal deficit during the period 2013 to 2022. And then it said,

    …

    And that’s where they got the $700 billion. If repealing Obamacare would add $700 billion to Medicare spending, it must be that Obamacare is draining $700 billion out of Medicare spending. Except, it isn’t. No programs are being cut; the the $700 billion represent savings in cost made possible by Obamacare.

    For example, when the individual mandate kicks in in 2014, about 30 million more Americans will get health insurance who don’t have it now. That means hospitals won’t be stuck with so many unpaid bills, which will save them much money. The Obama administration used that to negotiate a reduction in Medicare hospital reimbursement rate. That’s a chunk of the $700 billion. Ending the overpayments to Medicare Advantage is another chunk. There are several other such chunks that should make it possible to run Medicare with less money.

    The savings are to keep Medicare solvent. No benefits are being cut. The ACA is not taking money away from Medicare and giving it to some other program. Now, it’s possible that when all the pieces are in motion it will not work as planned, but to say that the $700 billion is being cut out of Medicare to fund “Obamacare” is just dishonest.

    Paul Ryan’s budget, on the other hand, cuts just as much out of Medicare to help fund tax cuts for the wealthy.

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