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It looks pretty good. However, I think that instead of those 54 and younger get cut, it should be a bit lower because at 54 they have paid in a lot of premiums. There’s a lot of people in that age bracket and it’s going to tick em off and then nothing gets passed. Maybe age 49 and under would be more reasonable, that lets in a lot more people who are prime voters, just a thought.
And a good thought.
I’m sure some thought was given to this when they chose the age so that medicare could be saved for seniors and at the same time offer a revised plan to better serve those younger. Younger workers have paid in and they will get a credit back toward their healthcare insurance if they choose the alternate plan…the suggested options are the same that Congress gets. There is also an option to stick with Medicare as it is now.
If these men are right about market forces reducing the cost of both healthcare and insurance (and there’s plenty of history to support the notion) everyone will benefit from less expensive healthcare costs.
Of course all of this is speculative since Congress will have to write and pass law before it ever sees the light of day…and we will have to win the election and control of Congress too.
My understanding of the Ryan plan is everyone 55 and older is not affected by the change. Those 54 and under will have the option of staying with the existing plan or going with a couple of options in the new plan.
Remember this will take several years to go thru Congress so anyone just under 55 now will have no change either.
My understanding of the Ryan plan is everyone 55 and older is not affected by the change. Those 54 and under will have the option of staying with the existing plan or going with a couple of options in the new plan.
Remember this will take several years to go thru Congress so anyone just under 55 now will have no change either.
My understanding of the Ryan plan is everyone 55 and older is not affected by the change. Those 54 and under will have the option of staying with the existing plan or going with a couple of options in the new plan.
Remember this will take several years to go thru Congress so anyone just under 55 now will have no change either.
(I’ve tried 4 times to post this, and it’s either failed or frozen up. So, if there are duplicates please feel free to delete them.)
I would be a lot more impressed with Republicans if they could find equal cuts in the Department of Homeland Security that Obama has turned into a giant parasite on taxpayer wallets.
So basically it’s Obamacare for seniors, fight your way through the private insurance market. Sounds like fun.
Jim you can’t possibly be such a big baby.
Insurance is a protection; you either want it or you don’t. Nobody OWES YOU squat! Grow up, read the plans, and choose one or take that risk of going without.
Scrapping Obamacare, getting state monopoly rules out of the way, and other measures that will hopefully be taken should help to bring the cost of insurance down and offer sensible choices to consumers.
I’ll just take this opportunity to remind everyone that starting next year, unless Obamacare is scrapped, an additional 0.9% Medicare tax will be charged to high earning individuals and couples.
Also, capital gains sales will be taxed an additional 3.8% (surcharge) for high earning individuals and couples. Liberal progressives want us to think that these are all Warren Buffet wealthy people but that isn’t the case. Heres an example of what will happen to retired seniors that did the right thing and invested in their own futures so as niot to become a burden on society:
http://www.cliftonlarsonallen.com/inside.aspx?id=364
Example 3.8 percent tax on net investment income
A retired couple reports a $300,000 capital gain from the sale of a rental property (this is investment income) and $50,000 of other non-investment income (such as pension payments and taxable Social Security benefits), making their total AGI $350,000 in 2013. The 3.8 percent tax applies to the smaller of the $300,000 of investment income, or the excess of total income over the $250,000 threshold. Total income of $350,000 is only $100,000 over the threshold, so this couple will pay $3,800 of new tax (3.8 x $100,000).
“They have plenty,” the redistributionists cry! Yes…because they saved and investewd their own hard earned money! It is their property and the money they used to purchase investments was already taxed.
But the progressives are stupid and here’s why:
Strategy: ….if your income is at or near these thresholds, the focus will be on maintaining a consistency in reportable income from year to year so as to stay beneath the thresholds. Spikes in income from large IRA withdrawals, bonuses, and substantial capital gain recognition, can trigger these taxes. (Monitor and stay beneath the threshold to avoid the tax!)
Only a fool would do otherwise.
Revenue will not flow to government because wise human beings will alter their behavior. When we enact policy that punishes achievement and wealth building we blunt revenue flow.
SET THE WEALTH BUILDERS FREE AND WE WILL ALL HAVE GREATER OPPORTUNITY AND RICHES! (Even covetous, greedy, thieving politicians in government)
Jim, If you need help with your insurnace let me know. I’m a great “Nanny.”
Rob Miller has it right. Now its up to the GOP and us to get the truth out.
Jim, I hope this helps explain it for you.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/08/the_gop_now_owns_the_medicare_issue.html
The GOP Now Owns the Medicare Issue
By Rob Miller
A number of prominent ex-Journolist members and reliably left leaning media lackeys are working overtime repeating one line over and over to try to aid the Obama Campaign…that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are going to end Medicare and leave seniors without coverage. The exact opposite is true, as I’ll demonstrate, but even more important is how this is going to turn over on the Obama Campaign. It’s a hanging curve ball just waiting to be hit out of the park.
First of all, let’s start with a simple truth. Medicare is going broke, and if nothing is done, the program will be bankrupt in around a decade.
The Obama Administration has accelerated this process by stealing around $716 billion from the program in order to fund a new entitlement, Obama Care. And contrary to what they’re telling you, these are not ‘administrative costs’ but actual reductions in service. ObamaCare is set to destroy Medicare Advantage, a program 12 million seniors use. It is already causing the rationing of cancer drugs and a de facto rationing of care that is going to get a lot worse as the Independent Payment Advisory Boards (IPABs), 15 unelected government officials, exercise the death panel style function they were designed for in ObamaCare and cut the payments to doctors and hospitals to the bone so that fewer and fewer of them can afford to accept Medicare patients. It is major rationing for seniors and ultimately the death of a thousand cuts for Medicare as a whole.
It is ObamaCare that was specifically designed to destroy Medicare, and to herd seniors into a one size fits all plan where care to them can be rationed with impunity. And even Dr. Donald Berwick, President Obama’s personal choice to run Medicare and Medicaid admitted it’s one of ObamaCare’s ultimate aims, as did Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the president’s chief healthcare advisers.
And unlike the final Medicare reform plan submitted by Paul Ryan, and the one outlined by Mitt Romney, these cuts directly affect current retirees.
Now you know who really wants to push grandma over the cliff.
By contrast, the plans advocated by Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan save Medicare.
No one over 55 is affected, and people younger than 55 have the option of traditional 1965-style Medicare if they want to…or premium support from government to pay for competing private insurance plans.
If you choose, you can swap today’s “defined benefit” Medicare system where the government decides on the price they’ll pay for medical services for a “defined contribution” system, where the government decides on an amount of money — “premium support” — to provide to individual consumers and then lets them choose from an approved set of competing private insurance plans. And there’s an open enrollment period each year allowing people to change their minds if they feel like it.
Not only that, but with this kind of system, there will almost certainly be supplemental plans marketed to those seniors who wish to purchase them along with traditional Medicare.
Now, there’s a concept — giving people the right to choose among insurers seeking Medicare customers for the services seniors feel are most appropriate for their needs, and allowing the competition of the private sector to increase efficiency and drive down costs.
Ah, but what happens if the “premium support” provided to seniors to buy coverage wasn’t enough, or if the amount’s annual growth doesn’t not keep up with the growth of health-care costs?
Wait, it gets better. Walk with me a moment.
First of all, seniors could always choose to opt for the traditional 1965-style Medicare, since the government would still contain a package of required benefits that would constitute comprehensive insurance coverage, just as Medicare does today.
But each year the plan calls for private insurers as well as Medicare to submit competitive bids to the government to provide coverage at the lowest cost they could sustain profitably. The government would then provide seniors in each region of the country with a “premium support” equal to the second-lowest bid in that region or one equal to the bid of the federal fee-for-service Medicare program, whichever was lower.
That way, seniors would be guaranteed to have a choice — there’s that word again — of at least one comprehensive coverage option that equals the premium support payment offered and that would involve the same level of out-of-pocket costs Medicare does today.
Of course, none of this touches on the huge savings in health care costs that need to be addressed on Medicare fraud (a $8 to $9 billion ‘industry’) or tort reform. We’ll call that dessert, to be enjoyed later.
Even nicer is the corner the Democrats have painted themselves into politically.
Ever since 1965, the Democrats have been able to use the Medicare hammer to bash Republicans, using the same old ‘throwing granny off the cliff’ argument. Certainly it’s been used in every campaign since Carter versus Reagan.
Even intelligent leftists still don’t realize what Obamacare has done to them. They might realize that ObamaCare cost them the 2010 midterms and that the hugely unpopular legislation is a rallying cry in this one. But they don’t seem to realize yet that Medicare isn’t their issue any longer.
The Democrats can lie, dissemble and rant, but they can’t change a basic truth. They can either defend ObamaCare, which was designed to destroy Medicare, or they can disavow ObamaCare. They can’t do both.
It’s President Obama who has put Democrats in the position of being the party that is cutting current seniors’ benefits, rationing care (thanks to the IPABs)and letting the program collapse as it becomes unsustainable.
Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have positioned the GOP to be the party that wants to protect seniors’ benefits and make them available for future generations.
If you’re a senior, the Democrats are offering you nothing except a grim, mean, rationed future when it comes to medical care.
It’s the Republicans that are offering a much better deal, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see this being hammered over and over.
Like I said, it’s a hanging curve ball just begging to be hit out of the park.
“Jim you can’t possibly be such a big baby…Nobody OWES YOU squat!”
Well I’m sure what you mean by that… However just so you know, I pay for my own health insurance out of my own pocket. I have worked since I was 16, including working full time for most of college. I’ve never worked for the government (although I have worked for a defense contractor) I’ve always worked in the private sector. I’m now self employed, which is why I’m familiar with how health insurance is a nightmare. I don’t know about you folks, but it hasn’t been easy to do. Most people who don’t think health insurance is difficult, haven’t bought it.
If the Paul Ryan Medicare Voucher plan is so good, then why wait off 10 years? Why not implement it right away?
The answer is obvious, few would want that for themselves, and most seniors would vote against any politician who would suggest it.
Doesn’t really matter, Romney has had a “come to Jesus” thing and now wants to increase Medicare spending!
Isn’t that special.
Bless your heart Jim, you are one of those rare and unappreciated people who have done it for yourself and I’m proud of you. We have a business too and finally got some advice from a professional on what plan would be best for us and our employees. It isn’t easy, you’re right about that.
The Ryan plan is a proposal at this point. He has apparently worked on three different proposals to reform healthcare and/or Medicare. He thinks that people over aged 55 that have paid into Medicare and planned their retirement lives around Medicare and SS benefits should be able to keep that plan. Those 55 and under should be offered alternatives that would help keep costs for everyone down and would hopefully remove some of the burden of the boomer generations care. The choice he offers is the same plan that Congress and the president have (They exempted themselves from Obamacare). His plan also requires those with means (the wealthy) to pay more for their care. Of course at this point it is just a proposal but as an economist he is looking at it from the perspective of trying to bring costs down for everyone by natural means…competition and consumer choice rather than cuts and mandates. We need that kind of relief.
You should take Peggy’s up on her offer; she’s a stickler and loves to dig into the details 🙂
54, are we? 53? 52?
I’m not saying it isn’t understandable human reaction: “cut them, don’t cut me!”
But you see the problem. The 44-year-olds feel just as vested as you do. How about we just pay a little more, and claim a little less? … eventually the boomer bubble will burst, and then the program will be just rolling in dough.
The really egregious aspect of the Ryan plan is turning from non-profit to for-profit, because that’s really going to cut into the amount of the pot that goes toward actual health care. We’ll just have to see what the children decide to do. I am not hopeful. They’ve been very poorly educated.
Tina: “The choice he offers is the same plan that Congress and the president have (They exempted themselves from Obamacare).”
That’s not true.
http://www.factcheck.org/2010/01/congress-exempt-from-health-bill/
Meanwhile, Romney seems to be struggling to decide whether his plan for Medicare is “very different,” “very similar,” or “identical” to Ryan’s plan:
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/08/16/13316039-from-very-different-to-identical-in-24-hours?lite
What will Romney think of Ryan’s plan the next time he is asked about it? Your guess is as good as mine. The man can’t seem to hold a consistent position on anything.
I always find it interesting that when a GOP Politician alters course on a subject, they are called a flip flopper, but when a Democratic politician changes their position on something it it referred to as evolving.
lol…how true!