Karl Rove urges GOP to campaign on eliminating Medicare (Bring it on, Karl!)

[FourScore]

Karl Rove urges GOP to campaign on eliminating Medicare
by Jed Lewison
Fri Feb 04, 2011 at 07:38:03 AM PST

...Instead of automatically being covered by Medicare, seniors would be given a subsidy for purchasing private coverage on a health insurance exchange. If that sounds familiar, it's because that's the way health care reform delivers insurance in individual market. The difference is while health care reform delivers universal coverage to a market that doesn't currently have it, eliminating Medicare and replacing it with private insurance would actually cause costs to skyrocket because private insurance costs rise much more quickly than Medicare.

So how would the Rove plan save money? Simple: by capping the size of the subsidy. Of course, that doesn't mean health care costs won't continue to rise. It just means if they rise faster than subsidy (which they will), then you won't be able to afford health care insurance. Oh well, tough luck for you. But hey, at least now we can afford to cut the Koch brother's taxes...

SNIP

...The real way to bring down Medicare costs is by doing things like eliminating subsidies for programs that don't offer any tangible benefit, but Rove starts out his column by attacking Democrats for having done just that in health care reform. The real way to bring down health care costs is doing things like empowering Medicare to negotiate on drug prices and, yes, making Medicare available to every American.

But to Karl Rove, the best way to reduce Medicare costs is to eliminate the program entirely and replace it with a voucher, even though the voucher won't be enough to purchase equivalent care. It's hard to imagine a less popular proposal, yet this is the plan he wants Republicans to embrace in 2012. Well, bring it on. It would be a political gift for the ages.

MORE ON THE HOME PAGE OF: http://www.dailykos.com/
Rove's op-ed: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703960804576120332384350582.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

[sharesunited]

1. Private insurance is a premium-collecting claim-denying racket.

Wish the People would vote in their own interest on this.

[Bandit]

2. Not just the Koch brother's taxes but Karl Rove's as well

In fact everytime one of those millionaire Pundits opens their mouth we should hang that on them. all they want is more for themselves and screw everyone else..

[patrice]

3. Rove wants to get rid of Medicare rather than reform it, because reform is going to hit his

fat-salaried, high maintenance, low value-adding constituency.

[Betty]

4. good luck finding insurance

when you're old and sick. The insurance companies won't touch you, or if they will, they will take your money and sell you a shit policy so full of loopholes and exclusions that your only real option will be to drop dead.

[RKP5637]

5. Racketeer says it all!!! n/t

[Kingofalldems]

6. GOP health plan: Die peasant!

[RKP5637]

7. That's their plan, kill off the peasants, no SS, no Medicare. I wish Americans would

wake up. They are only about money and greed, not people and not the future of the country.

[glinda]

8. Very difficult when there is an absence of "publicly seen" free press.

[RKP5637]

10. So true, and that is the root cause this goes on. I wish DU had millions of members

so more people could see some facts than relying on the MSM to be above board. We are so propagandized and brainwashed, but yet most Americans I bet think that only happens in other countries.

[WI_DEM]

9. I wish they would because if there is one segment of the electorate that Obama has trouble with

it's seniors and this would put them back in the Democratic camp.