The Setting
Paul Ryan is my hero.
For months, the health care debate has been a pathetic little pantomime of back-and-forth bickering. The Democrats advance a plan; the Republicans rebuke it. The Democrats make changes; the Republicans are unmoved. All of which has prompted the Democratic majority to stamp their tiny feet in frustration. “Show us the money!” they cry, pathetically, “Tell us how you would fix healthcare!”
Rep. Paul Ryan, finally, did just that. He wrote a reasoned, sensible plan that sketches an entirely different plan for healthcare from the Democrats. Then he took it a step further, and had it scored by the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO, staring at the bill from beneath the grey bushy eyebrows of wisdom, declared its opinion: Paul Ryan’s proposal would save money.
Shedloads of it.
“Begorrah!” you cry in shock. “What a turn of events? Could it be that the Strawman Blogger, an inveterate, unapologetic liberal, a nasty little mean intellect who delights in tweaking the nose of all things conservative, has finally changed his stripes? Has he come to support a conservative health care plan?”
You poor idiot. Of course not. Paul Ryan has suggested a shitty plan and, much worse, a shitty plan that is political suicide. Paul Ryan’s conservative brethren are scrambling away from his leprous proposal so quickly they are in danger of smashing through the walls of the Senate, leaving only comical congress person shaped holes behind, Looney Toons-style.
But that’s not Paul Ryan’s fault. The only thing Paul Ryan has done, the thing that is causing all sorts of conservative noses to crinkle, is clearly, intelligently, and lucidly write down a Republican health care alternative.
And just what is this alternative, you ask?
The Alternative
The alternative is pretty simple. Paul Ryan gets rid of Medicare. Instead of Medicare enrollment, seniors are given a voucher to purchase insurance on the existing private market. To save money, the voucher grows much, much more slowly than health care costs.
That’s the power of the proposal. Don’t want seniors spending money on medical care? Just don’t give them any. People will purchase fewer treatments because they won’t be able to afford them.
This is so awesome it has our gonads tingling. Balance the budget on the back of grandma. No wonder the CBO loves it.
Seniors, maybe less so.
The Smackdown
Because if there’s one thing guaranteed to lose you the support of the most powerful voting block in America, it’s asking them to balance the budget by skimping on the chemo. So, much like the Titanic should have done when sailing toward the world’s largest ice cube, Republicans are backing the hell away.
It’s not that seniors shouldn’t sacrifice, they say. But first we might want to try offering consumer protections. Make premiums more affordable. Bring competition to the individual market. All good ideas. Someone should really write a bill like that.
And that’s the lesson of Paul Ryan’s proposal. Sure, you can balance the budget without changing a single atom of our current system. You can leave insurance companies alone, you can ignore our staggering medical unit costs, and you can continue shoveling so much money to doctors that they have to carry their paychecks home in a wheelbarrow.
But that option has costs. It means that we offer less care and we annihilate the single most popular public program in living memory.
Still, Paul Ryan is a hero. He told people the truth. It may be an unpopular truth but, warts and all, we love it. We could use a lot more politicians like him.
