Paul Ryan's plan puts 2012 elderly vote in play

[Keith Bee]

Source: Politico

Democrats still smarting from their 2010 mid-term defeat see Republican Rep. Paul Ryan’s controversial plan to overhaul Medicare as political aspirin, a cure for just about everything that ails them. But for Barack Obama it’s more like Geritol — a targeted treatment for his chronic aches and pains with older voters.

Obama’s 2008 campaign was fueled by youthful enthusiasm and billed as a generational upheaval. But older voters, especially white working-class conservatives, were not a natural hope-and-change crowd, and he lost among seniors by nine points to John McCain. Many of them simply stayed home.

That skepticism, bordering on hostility, has carried over to his presidency.

Over-65 voters have given Obama the lowest marks of any age cohort in every weekly Gallup presidential approval survey taken since Obama took office. Last week, only 36 percent of seniors approved of his performance, seven points less than Obama’s overall approval rating and 12 points lower than his positive rating among 18-to-24 year-olds.

But Ryan’s plan, embraced by most Republicans, gives Obama a big opportunity in 2012 to regain lost ground in key battleground states and narrow the generation gap. “It finally gives us an argument to make with seniors… It’s a godsend,” said a Democratic operative allied with Obama who sees the issue as a way to make up lost ground with seniors in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Florida.



Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0411/53776.html

[jerseyjack]

1. But the people being hurt are not today's pensioners.

The effort needs to be directed at the "not seniors." In a town hall video I saw on D.U. this morning a woman summed it up.

Congrassman: "If we don't do this, Medicare won't be there beyond 10 years."

Woman: "So what, it won't be there anyway."

She pointed out that his plan makes it worse. Another woman explained that we was supposed to get medicare. She will get a voucher but she has a pre-existing condition. Who is going to insure her?


It is the younger people who need to understand what Ryan's plan means.

[Ship of Fools]

2. one thing, though

please keep it in mind that *younger* is relative. my sister is 53 and is naturally po'd. go down the line a couple of years, a 48-year-old is going to be po'd ... keep going ... you get my drift. it's not like there is a strict cut-off when you talk about age groups. they overlap and by osmosis or something they pick up the vibes from the person above that. don't count us old farts out. we have a pretty good sense of right and wrong, too, and just because we're about to khack doesn't mean that we don't care. hell, i have some old fart friends i would literally die for, right now, if i had to (although i won't, just out of spite, because that's what GOOPers want me to do).

[rasputin1952]

3. This actually goes a little beyond that...

it is the opening assault on all "entitlement" programs. SS, Medicare, Medicaid, Assistance to Needy Families...the idea is to shift huge sums of cash into the private sector, while leaving people behind to fend for themselves after the cash gushes upward.

Strategically, it has been part of the GOP mantra to do away with "social" programs, they can't do it all at once, so tactically, they chip away as they can. Only when people fight back and get rid of these bums will things change. Changes will affect every age group, the plan is to simply get rid of anything that is considered an "entitlement".

People have arisen in WI, ME, OH, IN and other places where R's are trying to force social change...the GOP is actually creating the "Death Panels" they railed about.

[Ship of Fools]

4. i understood the post, as well as the assault,

it's just that as far as my demographic goes, when it comes to pensions/retirement/medicare/ss etc., don't count seniors out as a voting bloc altogether. we're hip to this shit, at least those of us with half our brains left. there is a mix of voices at these town halls, thank god ... you're not just hearing teabagging rhetoric from us old farts, you're hearing educated farts as well.

[rasputin1952]

5. I'm an old fart too...

been fighting these clowns for many a year...win some, lose some.

This time though, I think that the ramifications of what the GOP plans to do will drag them into the dust. I've noticed a lot of Sr's at these meetings, and they aren't bussed in by Teabagger types, these are locals that are pretty ticked off at what the R's are trying to do. My mother, a lifelong 89 yo R is appalled at the assaults the GOP is making on the nation...most others are as well.

I'd say that 95% of Americans despise authoritarian control, which is what the the GOP has become...nothing more than a party of authoritarians.

[Ship of Fools]

6. agreed. hey, you're more polite than most around here. thanks.

[SemperEadem]

7. exactly

the people being hurt are those of us who are in our early 50's and younger... and we vote, too.

I am going to remember this when I go to the voting booth.

Tax the wealthy and leave SS and Medicare alone.

[G. Odoreida]

8. Seniors ARE going to receive less care. It's inevitable.

The non-secret "secret" about the high cost of American health care compared to other nations is the billions upon billions we spend in essentially futile care during the last six months of life. Barack Obama, Don Berwick, and Paul Ryan would all agree with this if their names could be kept off the quote.

If the system is to survive the demographic shifts of the next decades, this practice simply has to stop.

It may be that Paul Ryan prevails, and that the Medicare HMO's who are put in charge will determine that a hip replacement is not "indicated" for 90 year olds, and that a nice power wheelchair is more appropriate.

It may be that Barack Obama prevails, and that the Medicare advisory panel decides that quadruple bypasses for patients who've had two strokes are "clinically ineffective" as compared to a prescription and a walker.

But make no mistake, these decisions will all be cost motivated. Everyone who works in health care on the financial side has seen this coming for a decade.

The "golden age" of Medicare, when every new technology was covered, and when many weeks in the ICU preceded every death, are over. Repeat - over.

[Volaris]

9. If you are right, and I have no reason to doubt that you are,

do you see Assisted Suicide becoming MORE of a major national issue that it is now? Just wondering...

[G. Odoreida]

12. I really don't know about assisted suicide

I'm not personally a supporter of physician involvement in suicide, and I do not know if our system will move in that direction. What I hope for is much better availability of hospice care rather than the ICU, when there is no real prognosis for ever returning to a life at home.

[Volaris]

14. ok got it. and thank you=)

[No Elephants]

10. Politico is bsing and also being ageist and racist.

"Obama’s 2008 campaign was fueled by youthful enthusiasm and billed as a generational upheaval."

BS and untrue. First what does that really mean? Second, Did anyone really compare ages of Obama's volunteers and donors with those of say, Kerry's or Gore's?

Obama's campaign wisely registered younger voters in large numbers and younger voters were thought to favor Obama for the most part, but surely some young registrants voted Mc Cain Palin.

And WHO billed obama's campaign as "generational upheaval?" More to the point, what on earth does how someone "bills' a campaign have to do with stuff like facts or objective reality?

"But older voters, especially white working-class conservatives, were not a natural hope-and-change crowd...."

Wtf is a "natural hope-and-change crowd?" And which conservatives, regardless of age, class or race, were Obama's "natural" constituency?

And on and on. Please read this very critically.

[Alcibiades]

11. Seniors were betrayed by the GOP

This article has some serious faults, but the uptake is this: if the GOP was given any sort of mandate in 2010, it was to preserve Medicare. Now the first thing they do with their majority is to attempt eliminate Medicare.

Many seniors did appear to respond emotionally to the GOP appeals to fear, without asking themselves whether they actually trusted the GOP to safeguard Medicare. Now these seniors have been betrayed. One of the failings of our party in the past has been to respond to lies and propaganda with facts and figures, without understanding that people under the influence of lies and propaganda are immune to facts and figures. This issue needs to be framed in order to play up the affective component of what the GOP is attempting to do.

The GOP, claiming they would preserve health care for seniors, immediately proposed eliminating it. It's a betrayal. They want to eliminate Medicare, pure and simple. Let the GOP explain how their voucher system would work and hammer the far simpler point of this betrayal home.

[indypaul]

13. Past is once again prologue

The simple reason for the existence of medicare is that the private sector
could not or would not offer medical insurance to the elderly. Some employers
would keep retired persons insured but those were few and far between. Thus
seniors became unable to secure medical services unless they were financially
able or could rely upon family to provide same. The Republican plan as offered
by Mr. Ryan would only feed the beast i.e. the insurance industry and fail to
provide coverage adequate to the needs of the elderly. They did it once before
and government had to step in with medicare. There is no reason whatsoever to believe
the private sector would not repeat history. Those currently receiving medicare
coverage should remember a little history and those persons 55 and under have
absolutely no reason to ignore history and agree to Mr. Ryans Republican plan.

[nyy1998]

15. Good, seniors were pissed at us for "cutting Medicare" they ought to be even madder at this nt