Why do I oppose Rep. Paul Ryan's plan for reducing the federal budget deficit, the one House Republicans approved overwhelmingly last week? Let me count the ways. Actually, since there is not enough space on this page to count them all, let me just hit the highlights.
Worst things first. The plan threatens to eviscerate Medicare by privatizing it—with vouchers that, absent some sort of cost-control miracle, would fall further and further behind the rising cost of health insurance. And to make that miracle even less likely, House Republicans want to repeal every cost-containment measure enacted in last year's health-reform legislation.
Medicare would not die a sudden death under the Ryan plan—people over 55 are grandfathered. It would, instead, succumb slowly to a debilitating illness as the growing gap between the vouchers and the cost of private health insurance priced more and more seniors out of the market. This fate evokes conservative activist Grover Norquist's famous image: to keep on shrinking the government until it's small enough to drown in the bathtub. And who would go down the drain with it? Not prosperous Americans, whose huge tax cuts would more than compensate for their higher health-insurance bills, but middle-class people who really need Medicare.
The Ryan plan has received vastly too much praise from people who should know better. For a while, it was even celebrated as "the only game in town," which it never was. It was preceded by both the Bowles-Simpson and Domenici-Rivlin plans, which are vastly superior in every respect. Within days of Mr. Ryan's announcement, President Obama chimed in with his own ideas on deficit reduction—another huge improvement over the Ryan plan. Now we await the Senate Gang of Six's entry.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703916004576270832244940992.html?mod=googlenews_wsjText
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