How the Republicans have been received 'back home' after their vote for Paul Ryan's VOUCHERCARE

MOA is trying to keep you informed about what's happening out there with VOUCHERCARE. That's why I am posting as many videos as I can about it. We have to spread the word. YOU have to spread the word to everyone you know about VOUCHERCARE.
..........................


How is it going back home for the GOP in their Townhalls since their vote for Paul Ryan's VOUCHERCARE?

Well, here are some videos.

Beginning with Paul Ryan himself.

From Politico:

Record crowds of supporters and opponents flooded town hall meetings throughout southeastern Wisconsin on Tuesday to hear Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) defend his plan to trim government spending — including controversial changes to the Medicare program.

In the district’s Democratic stronghold of Kenosha, at least 200 people were left outside once the 300-seat auditorium filled to capacity. The people in the crowd largely opposed the Ryan plan, holding signs such as “RyanCare = Dying Bare,” “Leave Medicare Alone” or simply, “Save Medicare!”

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Ed Schultz also has a segment about the townhalls, and how the GOP believes it just has a ' messaging' problem.

It's not a 'COUPON' or a 'VOUCHER'...oh no, according to the GOP, it's ' VOUCHER SUPPORT', and it's going to help our Seniors.

BULL----

It's VOUCHERCARE, people.


To quote the GOP -----how they will ' fail' if the campaign discussion is about MEDICARE....but, if they can ' muddy the waters' with lies, then they can compete.

Look at the folks in these townhalls.....the GOP nightmare.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Here's Congressman Dan Webster's Townhall in Florida:




Ed Schultz says - A Choice of Two Futures

Schultz does a great breakdown of what VOUCHERCARE is all about.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Another one from Rachel Maddow. She expresses surprise that the story of the townhalls is getting press in the MSM.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Undoing Medicare: The Real 'Death Tax'

James Fallows wrote a blistering criticism of the Paul Ryan BUDGET FRAUD. He has come back to the Ryan FRAUD for more.

We can't let up. We have to keep at it, and I'm going to try and do my part.
A FRAUD is a SCAM is a SHAM.

THAT is Paul Ryan and his Budget.

From James Fallows:

Undoing Medicare: The Real 'Death Tax'


From my days as a school kid I remember the original debate over creating Medicare. At the time, my dad -- a small-town doctor and at that stage a conservative -- was, like most doctors and the AMA as a whole, strongly against the plan, as a step toward "socialized medicine." After all, when his patients couldn't pay, he found ways to reduce or forgive their fees. The opposing argument, which in the long run convinced nearly everyone (including the AMA, and my father) was that leaving older people exposed to the threat of open-ended and potentially ruinous medical expenses, or dependent on individual doctors' charity, was harmful all around.

Controlling the open-endedness of medical spending is of course a major public and private challenge. To repeat: "bending the curve" of health-care expenses is absolutely necessary. But until recently it had been taken as settled wisdom, on both policy and political grounds, that insuring people against the risk of complete financial ruin from late-in-life medical expenses left everyone better off. Old people, their families, doctors and the medical system too. Our health care system is out-of-control and unsustainable in countless ways. But very rarely has anyone argued that removing universal coverage for older people would make things better rather than worse.



That's the understanding being challenged by Rep. Paul Ryan's "serious" budget plan. I've been trying to find the way to convey what it would mean to go back to the pre-Medicare era in which each family had to prepare for unknowably large late-in-life expenses. Merrill Goozner, on his GoozNews site, has just now put it in the way I was looking for. He writes (emphasis added):

Here's the real argument young and middle-aged people need to hear, and the real reason why the "more skin in the game" argument can never work for seniors or other vulnerable populations, including them when they reach that age. Seniors and the poor account for over half of health care spending. Within those groups, 5 percent of the population accounts for 50 percent of health care costs; and 20 percent of the population accounts for about 80 percent. These costs come for the most part at times when economic incentives have no influence at all on medical decision-making: in medical crises; in treating chronic conditions; and, for most Medicare patients, in the last six months of life.

That's why a voucher program for Medicare, which will shift an increasing share of those inevitable costs onto the elderly themselves, can fairly be categorized as a 100 percent estate tax or death tax. People under 55 need to know that if the plan crafted by Rep. Paul Ryan were passed, most of them will never have a cent to leave to their children. It will all go to the health care industry to support the American way of dying.

Here's a bit of real world evidence supporting that view: Why is the savings rate so unbelievably high in China -- as much as 50 percent of the GDP? There are many reasons, crucially including exchange-rate policy. But a very powerful individual motivator is each family's knowledge that there is no Medicare-like system for their older members. Health care is on cash-payment basis there, and so every family must save like crazy against the risk that the parents or grandparents will require very expensive late-in-life care. More savings would be good for America, but that's not the right way to induce them. It's hard to believe that the Republicans will seriously embrace a plan to undo Medicare.
___
UPDATE: Two points I thought of making, but skipped, earlier today.

1) If one major goal is containing overall health spending, it is flat-out delusional to think that older people, in their role as patients or individual purchasers of insurance policies, can be more effective negotiators than Medicare in its entirety dealing with the health system as a whole.

Doctors gripe about Medicare, but they hardly love the private insurers. And every bit of real-world evidence suggests that private insurers are worse at containing total costs, and of course administrative overhead, than Medicare or especially the VA. I won't give all the details now, but Phillip Longman on the VA is a great place to start. Moreover, the people shopping for insurance will be in a terrible position: older, retired, many or most with preexisting conditions. In short, if you want to "bend the curve" of medical spending, this is exactly the wrong way to do it.

2) If another major goal is reducing the non-purely-economic costs and anxiety of disease and treatment, then this is also a terrible idea. It means that, potentially, every older person, plus his or her family, must factor in a risk they're not now exposed to: the "what if??" of absolutely ruinous medical costs.

In short: the overall economic price tag for medical care is likely to go up under this plan; and the number of people who will have to live with worry about ruinous medical bills will be much greater. This is part of the reason why, until very recently, no "serious" person proposed getting rid of Medicare.