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A sad day for Oregon: Is this a future weather report on Medicare?
Oregon is a progressive state and is well represented by Senator Jeff Merkley. Ron Wyden has been slowly moving to the right but his latest move is a knife in the back of all Democrats running in 2012.
Democrat Ron Wyden and Republican Paul Ryan propose overhaul of Medicare
WASHINGTON – In an unlikely partnership, Sen. Ron Wyden joined Rep. Paul Ryan on Wednesday in a plan for remodeling Medicare to ensure its long-term future.
The plan that Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon and Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, rolled out is a hybrid of earlier ideas, modified and repackaged in a way they hope will soften the partisan political turmoil.
Medicare serves more than 47 million Americans and is nearly sacred politically. At the same time, the ballooning costs projected for Medicare threaten both the popular program and the national economy.
The congressional debate over Medicare typically pits Democrats resisting change against Republicans complaining about costs. By wading into that debate together — and doing it in an election year — Wyden and Ryan hope to convince lawmakers from both parties to have what Wyden called “a different conversation.”
The Democrats were planning to run against Paul Ryan’s medicare plan in 2012. Wyden just made that much more difficult if not impossible. Ryan himself may have been vulnerable. This is the sort of thing you would expect from a blue dog Democrat from a conservative state not a Democrat from Oregon. Needless to say progressives and Democrats in the state are furious. Wyden was just reelected in 2010 I anticipate he will be a Republican by 2016.
18 Responses to “A sad day for Oregon: Is this a future weather report on Medicare?”
The problem is his chosen religion. The First Church of Free Market, Sociopath.
Thank heavens that there are Democrats, including Liberals like Wyden, who are willing to work with conservatives to get real solutions to our entitlements crisis.
I always have had respect for Ron Wyden, though. He’s one of only a few Democrats willing to consider real tax reform, and now, clearly, entitlement reform.
There comes a time when the right and the left have to decide that doing something right for the country is much more important than doing something that gets the President reelected.
It appears that Wyden understands that Medicare is going broke and changes need to be made before it goes bankrupt.
This may not be the best solution, but it opens a conversation that the President and the left have refused to enter into for fear of right getting any credit.
Now all we need is someone on the right to agree to talk about increased revenues to reduce the debt and we may have something good starting.
@RP
I think we all know that medicare is going broke but what we don’t agree on is letting private insurance companies sucking up 20% plus of healthcare dollars is a solution.
This is a far cry from Ryan’s original plan. With these concepts and the long time frame for discussion, maybe something realistic will emerge. Especially since most of PPACA will be implemented by 2022.
Bravo to Ryan and Wyden for their courage to buck the political tides.
But if you look at their plan you’ll realize that it’s doomed to fail. It depends on the market doing something that it’s just incapable of doing. The market system just won’t work for health care. The psychology of how people are capable of dealing with it compared to other “transactions” is totally different because the motivation is different. While food is necessary for survival, that isn’t what people are really thinking about while they’re in the grocery store. They like food. They are thinking about their budget but also the pleasure of a good meal or dessert or a snack. That is not the mindset one has when looking at the paperwork for health insurance or when they are sitting in the doctor’s waiting room or heading to the hospital.
Of course that isn’t the worst problem when depending on for-profit systems in the 21st century to control costs to their customers. Wall Street would hate them for it. Profits must constantly grow. The company must grow. Nothing else matters in a publicly held company any longer. The growth in health care costs lies not in the failure of government but the failure of large for-profit systems. The companies of Big Pharma say they need their profit margins to pay for research even as they cut their research budgets and increase their budgets for advertising and legal departments that try to play games with the patent system. Wyden may be a Democrat but his faith in the market to solve problems in health care is both very Republican and very lacking in any evidence that it will ever work.
The point of the Wyden/Ryan plan is to make certain that PPACA isn’t implemented, though.
Wyden is owned by Blue Cross/Blue Shield. What he doesn’t want anyone to know is that eliminating private insurance companies would reduce health care costs by nearly 20 percent. The timing is the problem – the Democrats were going to run against Paul Ryann’s execution of Medicare – Wyden just made that more difficult. Jim is right, the plan is a non starter – the private insurance companies can’t compete with Medicare and they won’t even try. This makes Wyden’s move even more traitorous.
This is just so politically tone-deaf, Ron. I’ve known Ron Wyden since he was a congressman, and now I have to say that I don’t know him at all.
Wyden is a fool if he thinks Ryan can be trusted. Or maybe he’s just a fool period (or a closet republican). Ryan has already shown his true colors and they are definitely not pretty. Neither are they going to change.
I’m probably missing something. The way I read it people can choose Medicare or private insurance. Which would you choose?
If the private companies can’t/won/t compete with Medicare what’s the problem? If all the safeguards listed are built in they would have to be pretty good to compete but who’s to say they can’t/won’t? And if they are any good at all, maybe they will get the health industry to lower costs.
We know Medicare can’t be sustained at the current level once all the baby boomers are eligible unless more revenue is to be transferred to that account. Otherwise we must start cutting back on services whether private or public. We are already seeing cutbacks for Medicare patients with PPACA starting to be implemented.
PPACA will mean more efficient health care but it will also mean cutting out more services now available to the eldery if revenue from somewhere else isn’t transferred.
There are many things that people write about, but fail to report all the facts.
As someone involved with heathcare finance for many years, I know that the current system can not continue, nor can a federal system take its place.
1. The billing and documentation requirements are so complicated and convoluted that it takes experts and expensive computer programs to even bill a simple xray of the arm.
2. Indivisuals that do the billing are high school graduates that have received on the job training, but lack the experience to know when something is really right, they most ,ikely bill what they see and move on.
3. Ever since 1980, the federal goverment has complained about fraud and abuse. They bring in DRG billing procedures tha pay for services based on diagnosis, but still that fraud continues. There are still fake providers billing millions in fake claims that the Medicare program pays and still the governemnt complains about fraud. DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT OR LET SOMEONE ELSE DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!
The federal govenment has demonstrated it can not be a good stewart of our funds, so lets get the government out of the way and try something else. If yoiu do something bad, we should not be giving more money away unless you like wasting money like Washington has done for years.
The AMA controls the health care industry, and destroyed the free market long ago. While they have control, no plan will work, since it will be neutered as it goes through congress.
Socialized Medicine for all, Socialized Education for everyone and full Social Security benefits set at $38,000 per annum at age 58. Adjust all national budgetary/taxation law/policy to support this. If Germany can do it, we can do it.
“LET SOMEONE ELSE DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT”
I suppose the caps are intended as an indication of your passion.
Too bad republicans have shown how incapable they are of governing. Too bad they can’t be trusted to do anything that is in the best interest of the country. If that wasn’t the case then maybe all your caps would mean something. As it is, we all should know by now what they really care about.
The_Ohioan,
What you are missing is that there are certain details missing. Once the choice has been made can you change back? Not answered. You mention the PPACA again. But you forget, the idea of the Wyden/Ryan plan is to replace the PPACA so the good things about it will go away. And once again, the for-profit health care industry cannot and will not reduce costs. If they do succeed in reducing the costs to them it will go into their profits, not to reducing costs to the customers.
Jim S.
“the idea of the Wyden/Ryan plan is to replace the PPACA”
Again, I’m missing something. Must not be my day! Where in the article, or elsewhere, is that fact expressed?
That was the entire point of Ryan’s initial plan, to serve as a replacement for PPACA. Given that I would have to assume that it is still Ryan’s goal and Wyden has bought into it.