Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is chairman of the House Budget Committee and has put forward a plan that would end Medicare. He was telling another reporter that he was concerned about providing poor people with a safety net when we had this exchange:
Sam Husseini: If you’re a fiscal conservative and you want to provide a safety net, why wouldn’t you be for something like a single-payer health care system?
Paul Ryan: I think a single-payer health care system would be a disaster for people who need health-care the most. I think it would cause rationing, waiting lines. I think it would be a fiscal house of cards, I think it would help accelerate a national debt crisis and hurt the economy.
Husseini: Wouldn’t it save a lot of money and cover everybody?
Ryan: Absolutely not. I totally and fundamentally disagree with it. I believe that you can have affordable access to healthcare for all Americans, including people with pre-existing conditions, without a government takeover of the healthcare sector. If we actually have government-run healthcare, what I think you’ll have is government managing, government-rationing healthcare. I think that will be a fiscal disaster, I think that it would accelerate a debt crisis that would slow our economy and take jobs and economic growth from those people that need it the most, which are people who are out of work.
Husseini: Doesn’t Medicare have a much lower — 2 or 3 percent — overhead compared to the insurance companies? Which — insurance companies –
Ryan: — That’s an apples and oranges comparison. If you take a look at Medicare itself, Medicare is going bankrupt.
Husseini: That’s the healthcare system in general that’s going bankrupt.
Ryan: There are three facts about medicare that you simply can’t dispute: 10,000 seniors are retiring everyday with fewer workers going into the workforce to pay for them; healthcare costs are skyrocketing at about four times the rate of inflation, which threatens medicare’s ability to give affordable care; and number three, the non-partisan experts agree that Medicare is going bankrupt. So Medicare’s status quo is bankruptcy and that threatens healthcare not only for current seniors but obviously for future seniors, so I believe a patient-centered healthcare system — reforms that put the patient at the center of the healthcare system, not the government — are the best for people who need healthcare and they’re best for the economy, and they’re the best way to avert a debt crisis.
Husseini: But isn’t the problem with healthcare fundamentally the corporate structure? I mean your biggest funders are a who’s who — Northwestern Mutual –
Ryan: — Which is a big employer in Milwaukee by the way —
Husseini: — Aurora Health Care, Abbott Laboratories, Credit Suisse — the insurers — [see "Paul Ryan's Health Industry Ties..." Humana Inc., Blue Cross/Blue Shield and Aetna]
Canada and many other countries with universal health care systems rely on preventive medicine to keep down the cost of hospitalizations and medical intervention, the US system is run by big pharmaceutical companies who just wanto to make a “buck” many of our doctors are trained by big pharma to push medications that are un-necessary or have too many side-effects, for example, cholesterol meds are used extensibly and have known side-effects while omega3 fatty acids, whicha are natural, have similar effects on controlling cholesterol and have no harmful side-efects, when doctors prescribe cholesterol lowering drugs they warn patients to stop taking any omega3′s since the usage of both products together can cause excessive blood thinning and possibly hemorrhages, what they don’t mention is that the use of those medications (warfarin like substances or rat poisson check the labels of mice killers at your local hardware store) cause many serious health issues and you could do without by simply using quality omega3′s
Ryan is nothing but a prostitute for Health Insurance Companies. He doesn’t care two shits about what people need, all he care about is satisfying his corporate masters.
Patient-centered healthcare? yes maybe, if you are rich and have billions in your bank account. You know what the most horrible situation is? I have health insurance, I pay thousands of dollars each year, my employer pays thousands of dollars, essentially hurting my bottom line because if the employer would not have to be responsible for paying my health insurance, that money could go in my pocket. But the most outrageous thing about all this,is the fact that even though I pay all this money, I still cannot afford to go to the doctor if I need it, thanks to the sky-high co-pays that I have to pay even though I pay so much already. Isn’t that horrible? I pay out my ass for health insurance and I still cannot afford to see a doctor. All that money just goes to the pockets of health insurance companies CEOs. What a fuck are these so-called health insurance companies CEOs are doing anyways, but screwing people over? I subsidies these leeches luxury life style, while I barely scrap money together for food. Ryan says premiums go up uncontrollably. Yes they do, because corporations increase premiums at their whim, no one is there to slap their filthy fingers when they decide to increase the prices so they can buy more jets, vacation houses and prostitutes like Ryan. That’s why insurance premiums go up, not to pay their regular workers a higher wage. Wages have not gone up for 20 years, while corporations have never been richer. Ryan is nothing but a bottom bitch for corporations. He makes me sick. But then again, I cannot afford to be sick.
The American people have been duped for so long they don’t even realize it. It’s a long-standing joke in Canada that Americans are afraid of going bankrupt if they get really sick. I have never worried about my financial status due to illness because I know that my care will be covered. I am so thankful that I live in Canada.
Paul Ryan:
You are a disgrace to represent Wisconsin! Are you being paid off also by the Koch brothers too? If so……. just move out of Wisconsin! We don’t want you here!
Ryan is a soulless, ruthless prick.
There’s two kinds of people in America, and two kinds only: people who own, work for, or invest in health insurance companies…and everyone else.
We got a taste of Mr. Ryan’s brand of rationing based on economic status a couple weeks ago. My spouse went to a local ER after several episodes of shortness of breath and severe dizziness combined with severe pain in his back and legs. The gentleman in the next cubicle was complaining of very similar symptoms minus the extreme pain. Our doctor was very curt toward us when she found he did not have insurance. She did the bare minimum of tests and discovered his blood pressure was extremely high as well as signs he could have active atherosclerosis. Meanwhile, the man next door, with nearly identical symptoms was given medications and admitted for care. We were lectured on “using the ER for healthcare” and sent away with nothing but a couple prescriptions for the pain in his legs. No attempt was made to bring his blood pressure under control or deal with any underlying issue which brought him into the ER. THAT is healthcare rationing, Mr. Ryan. Man with insurance gets care and treatment – man without it gets a lecture and sent packing with no medication or treatment.
So what makes the difference Paul Ryan. private Insurance companies ration medical care to increase their profits. So Government or insurance companies who is worst?
Why don’t the democrats speak out on WHY they attacked the health care problem right off the bat, which Obama has been highly criticized for– that it is crippling our society financially. American people need fair & adequate health care, such as what is available in Europe, etc., but we only hear about this from the private sector, i.e. Michael Moore, etc.–WHY ARE DEMS LETTING REPUBS GET AWAY WITH THEIR PROPOGANDA?
Paul Ryan doesn’t even believe what he’s saying… He’s just a corporate thug…. Look in that man’s eyes when he’s talking… HE DOESN’T'T BELIEVE WHAT HE”S SAYING…. He’s just standing up for the big insurance companies and there profits… He’s enjoying the kick-backs even if it means Americans suffer…. HE”S NOT and that’s all that matters to him….
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Thanks, I needed some of these points to counter editorials in my conservative hometown, Cincinnati. But, I also know more is required. Like Madison, we’ll need a Nationwide grassroots, labor oriented sit-down strike to get close to what we want and what we, as a Country, need.
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“I put ideas on the table that show, that we can get to a patient-centered healthcare system that helps create jobs, that helps get healthcare costs under control, and gives everybody affordable healthcare coverage for everyone regardless of income or pre-existing conditions.”
LOL, Ryan is actually calling for universal health care, though he’s pushing a market based “solution” that guarantees the opposite result. The simple fact is that markets determine pricing for goods through an equilibrium between supply and demand. That doesn’t mean that everyone gets the good or service. Quite to the contrary. It means some people will have to do without because producers will determine that an optimal price point is beyond what many can afford to pay.
well done, thanks
“Government healthcare will destroy jobs” – ad lib of Ryan
Huh? Is he saying the private sector employs more people to accomplish the same thing as Medicare, yet still insists it is more efficient?
Where is the incentive for private health insurance to try to constrain health care costs? I don’t see one. If health care costs go down, their premiums and revenue would have to follow. They need costs to rise each year so they can increase premiums to increase revenue, while working to deny coverage to increase margins, as well.
“the non-partisan experts agree that Medicare is going bankrupt”
The trustee’s report says medicare costs will grow from 3.6% of GDP to 6.2% of GDP by 2085. Defense spending is 6.4% of GDP in 2011 and was 3.56% of GDP in 1999. So the country made a similar jump in defense spending but did it over a decade rather than 75 years.
A SUMMARY OF THE 2011 ANNUAL REPORTS
Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees
http://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/index.html
Medicare costs (including both HI and SMI expenditures) are projected to grow substantially from approximately 3.6 percent of GDP in 2010 to 5.5 percent of GDP by 2035, and to increase gradually thereafter to about 6.2 percent of GDP by 2085.
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Why not simply ask: “Every other first world country pays half as much as the United States for healthcare and gets the same or better results. Why don’t we do what they do?”
There’s no need to list health insurers, although it’s worth pointing out that if the Federal debt’s an existential crisis, saving a few jobs in an industry that adds no value to healthcare shouldn’t be a priority at all. The problem isn’t insurers or hospitals or drug companies. or doctors. The problem is that, as a whole, the healthcare industry isn’t producing the sort of innovation that justifies the level of inflation we see. We’re rewarding failure. This is the opposite of conservatism.
Anyway, it’s vital to lead with the facts — national healthcare (or national insurance) is cheaper and works better. Your opening question makes no sense to most people who have unfortunately bought the argument that this isn’t the case. In that environment, asking Ryan whether single-payer care is better as a rhetorical question won’t ever work.
Ryan’s always ready to roll with 3 or 4 stock objections to national health insurance that are easily refuted. When he brings up rationing, ask: “You say that having Medicare not pay for treatments that are too expensive and don’t work is rationing. What do you call it when insurance companies wrongly deny 1 in every 10 claims they receive just because they usually get away with it?” Similarly, if he brings up some drugs not being covered by the NHS, ask, “Can you name a drug or procedure that’s not covered by the NHS that’s covered by most American insurance plans?” When he brings up wait times in Canada: “How long do Americans who can’t afford health insurance have to wait for surgery?” When he says that French, British, or Canadian healthcare costs are rising: “Wow! At that pace, how long will it take until health care in France costs as much as healthcare in the United States?”
When he says that healthcare inflation is too high, ask “Why, then, do you want to increase the cost of healthcare for seniors and everyone else?”
“Wherever we’ve seen government-run healthcare, it’s failed.”
That is a truly amazing statement. The proper response to that statement is, “Can you provide some examples? In what way have the systems in the UK, Canada, Sweden, Norway, Japan and France failed?”
Yes. Switching over to single-payer will cause people to lose their jobs. There are a ton of people out there whose job it is to verify whether a patient or treatment is authorized. It’s the job of these people to try and figure out how to say “no” and then defend that position until the patient gives up, dies or the insurance company has to pay up. There are also a lot of jobs in medical billing and doctor’s offices that go away if doctors no longer have to fight insurance companies in order to get paid. The vast majority of those jobs will no longer be necessary if all citizens are covered and all doctors only use one system to submit claims and receive payments. And I will not miss them nor bemoan the loss of these jobs. That money would be better spent PROVIDING actual healthcare than PREVENTING it.
Another question for Ryan: “You claim we have to do something because Medicare costs are rising so fast. But cost outside the Medicare system are more expensive and rising even faster. How will healthcare costs overall be reduced if seniors are moved into a system where insurance and medical care are more expensive and where those costs are increasing more rapidly?”
I would love to see someone ask Congressman Ryan whether or not he has read Kenneth Arrow’s landmark paper in 1963 in the American Economic Review that details the problems with applying standard economic models to medical services. If he had, he would know that he starts from a faulty premise, as Republicans so commonly do because they don’t actually understand basic economics. The medical care market, like finance and insurance, are markets characterized by massive asymmetries of information that those with the information (sellers) use to exploit consumers. Listening to all of this love for the “private sector” makes me gag as almost no one with such love for the private sector understands what it takes to generate the private sector efficiency that they so love…..
I wonder what rotted ‘apple’ or ‘orange’ Rep. Paul Ryan crawled out of in his corporated-funded, and practiced diatribe against single payer health when he stated a single payer health care system would be “… a disaster for people who need health care the most.” In this 2 minute irony he twisted around the truth about the of health care – government-funded – delivery my mother have enjoyed for many years; we ordinary, at times, poor folk. A single-payer national health insurance system – based on medical need and not on the ability to pay – is the present political climate is the only efficient and just means to provide health care for all.
Virginia Franco
Maybe things are different on Ryan’s Planet, but on the one where my wife and I live, I get pretty good medical care from the V.A., while today my wife canceled an appointment for a cardiac stress test after learning that while Blue Double Cross “covers” this test, they only cover $50 of its total $1500 cost.
This is the way the licans like things to be. Um hm.
My wife and I have lived in Switzerland and Arizona, and had a child in both. The entire insurance system was much, much, much, much easier in Switzerland and we had good health care and great doctors in both countries. I’ve also lived in France and Germany. In the U.S. we already have government run health care — the V.A. system and Medicare and Medicaid. The worst health care system in the world is the private insurance market in the U.S. These companies are for-profit, where profit means denying as much care as possible and always having as much barriers and paperwork as possible to get care, to pay for care and to get reimbursed for health care you’ve already paid for. I would join a medicare-for-all plan instantly. Paul Ryan has probably never lived under any other health care system — Republican plans to give vouchers to seniors to join the private insurance market would be a terrible step backward decades to when we didn’t have medicare.
Why doesn’t Congress (the Republicans) put ALL healthcare up for bids and award one company ALL the healthcare business to the complete exclusion of all others. That would first mean only one company full of rich executives, second all eyes (especially the losing bidders’) would be on that company to deliver healthcare at the best price, and third the winning bidder would fully embrace the “single payer” strategy.
I have a proposal for Paul Ryan. Let’s offer his new Medicare plan to Congress. He keeps inaccurately saying it’s just like the plan Congress has. I think we should give Congress the plan just as Ryan proposes it. They get a fixed amount to go out in the private insurance market to buy health insurance – indexed to the cost of living inflation, not medical care inflation. Taking any bets on how many are uninsurable? or even with very substantial salaries, will not be able to afford insurance?
Jesus Christ, what an idiot Ryan is! As if we don’t have rationing of healthcare now, this very moment, with tens of millions with no coverage at all?
As David Brooks would say, empirical data is not “dispositive.” Let’s ignore what single-payer skewed systems throughout the developed world tell us about the 60 year history of greater efficiencies relative to a privately managed health care system and get on with the brave new world of Vouchercare, a “trial-and-error” (Brooks term, not mine) so-called patient-centered system.
This is not, of course, about ever getting Ryan to admit the truth. He’s on too much of an ego trip at this point to ever do that. He’s having his Roark moment. But reporters such as Sam Husseni must continue to relentlessly pursue him so that we accumulate even more of this nonsense on the YouTube record. And thank you Sam.
One possible tack with Ryan the next time someone corners him: “Could you point us to the peer reviewed studies showing that recipients of Medicare want the Federal government to ‘take its hands off Medicare’? I mean, if you are talking about patient-centered health care insurance, is it at all appropriate to ask the patients what they think about all this — on a statistical, not an anecdotal basis? Or do you presume you know better than they do? My goodness, you sound almost like a (caricature of) a Big Government Democrat!”
As a Briton, I find the comments here fascinating. Why don’t all your countrymen think this way? The NHS has its problems in the UK, but the principle of universal healthcare is very strongly supported and to even talk about messing with it is political suicide. I think most Europeans watch the health care debate in the US with bemusement. Once provided, universal health care programs tend to be very popular – as evidenced by your own Medicare program. And yet the US is having a debate about whether to get rid of this popular program and replace it with a more expensive, less efficient, less humane private sector alternative. It’s surreal. Meanwhile, the principle of government-provided universal health coverage is denounced as “socialist”. I can tell you, the UK ain’t socialist.
I support the Matthew above me!
The answer Ryan gives poppycock, I don’t understand where he was going with that, it’s like trying to talk to my mom who spins extended metaphors in conversation like an artist, sometimes, you can’t follow it.
Oh, by the way, has he even looked at France, I mean, seriously, France is kicking our butts in regards to managing costs and extending coverage.
BH wrote:
“That is a truly amazing statement. The proper response to that statement is, “Can you provide some examples? In what way have the systems in the UK, Canada, Sweden, Norway, Japan and France failed?”
Strictly speaking, Canada, Japan, and France do not have government-run health care. Canada has national health insurance, where each provincial and territorial government serves as an insurer but providers are privatized. Japan and France follow the Bismarck Model of private, highly regulated insurance. In addition to the other countries you cite, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Italy, and Spain have government-operated health care systems. So, for that matter does the United States: The highly regard VA system is government-owned and -operated.
I lived in France 3 yrs in 6 different regions. Their healthcare facilities are medieval compared to ours.
I’d like to point out that the Bush Medicare Prescription Benefit only benefits the drug companies. Please keep in mind that this is why the Republicans destroy a program. In this case they passed an expensive mandate that fixes the price of drugs unnaturally high. This will eventually bankrupt Medicare. This is on purpose. They destroy programs that work, or agencies that work and then want to privatize them.
Look at the US Postal Service. The organization is being forced to pay pensions 70 years in advance. This golden goodie was passed by Republicans in 2005 and as a result it looks like the Postal Service will run out of money by the end of the year. I’ve seen this kind of situation play out over and over again, different venue, slightly different method. In California the Republican governor and legislature deregulated electricity. When the Democratic governor takes over he’s faced with a crisis with rolling blackouts. He caves and negotiates high electricity rates for a number of years. Voters recall him and we get the Terminator.
Democrats have used this technique also at the behest of their corporate masters. NYC faced a major financial problem brought on by high-interest short-term borrowing. The administration that brought this on the city was long gone and the next mayor faced the crisis. NYC was eventually stuck with paying bonds that were no bargain and destroying city services.
Folks, the corporate interests that seek to make money at any cost (to you), are out to provide corporate education to your kids, expensive corporate mail delivery, drugs and medical care insurance that will ensure that if you get seriously sick, you’re screwed, etc. It’s time to tax the rich. Bring the corporations under control, because they’re waging war on us.
Graph of difference in medical costs, U.S. & France: http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2012/08/healthcare-costs-france-and-us.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+JessesCafeAmericain+%28Jesse%27s+Café+Américain%29
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