Health Care Policy: Paul Ryan Health Care Proposals

By Refusing to Implement the Medicaid Expansion Republican Governors May Be Making the Republican Block Grant Proposals Impractical

Paul Ryan's Medicaid block grant proposals have always made sense to me. Give the states their Medicaid allotment and real flexibility over how they spend what will inevitably be less federal money.

But as I have thought about the impact of implementing the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"), Medicaid block granting is looking more and more problematic.
Under the new

"Five Myths About Medicare"

I recommend you read John Rother's recent op-ed in the Washington Post, "Five Myths About Medicare."John argues that each of these statements is a myth:Medicare is inefficient and fails to control costs--the CBO has projected that per capita spending will grow only 1% more than inflation over the next decade.The well-off don't pay enough for their Medicare benefits--working age premiums as well

Medicare Advantage Premiums Drop an Average of 7% and Enrollment up 10%—That Must Make Republicans Just Want to Cry

Medicare Advantage would appear to be a fantastic success—senior premiums are dropping and enrollment is increasing.Listening to Health and Human Services Secretary Sebelius last week, you would think private Medicare plans were a Democratic idea and this is their success. Many industry observers, including me, have worried that Medicare Advantage benefits would shrink and premiums would rise

Paul Ryan and Ron Wyden Blow the Medicare Reform Debate Wide Open!

House Budget Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) have embraced a Medicare reform plan that in concept borrows heavily from one championed by former New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici and former Clinton budget chief Alice Rivlin.Specifically, Wyden and Ryan are proposing to alter the earlier Ryan Medicare plan by:Continuing to offer the traditional Medicare plan—Ryan would have

The Super Committee Failure—What’s Next?

The stock market today was shocked, simply shocked, that the Super Committee didn’t come up with a debt deal.I don’t know why. Republicans can’t vote for more taxes unless they're willing to get “primaried” from the right and risk losing their seat. Ditto for Democrats who would face the same punishment from their base if they voted to change the sacred defined benefit entitlements without at

The Ryan Health Care Proposals—Not Your Congressman’s Health Plan

Update: The New Wyden-Ryan Plan - Paul Ryan and Ron Wyden Blow the Medicare Reform Debate Wide Open! In a speech at the Hoover Institution today, Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) argued again that his proposal to reform Medicare, and now his tax credit proposal for replacing the Democratic health care law for those under-age 65, would guarantee to citizens “options like the ones members of

The Health Leadership Council Medicare Proposal: Too Much Responsibility on Beneficiaries and Not Enough on Providers

The Health Leadership Council (HLC), a coalition of CEOs from many of the leading health care companies, has created a list of Medicare reform recommendations for the Super Committee tasked with finding at least $1.2 trillion in budget savings.As we begin the national debate over what to do about Medicare's unsustainable costs, I will suggest that the HLC proposal gives us one, of what will have

Inconvenient Facts for Both Republicans and Democrats—Neither Side’s Health Care Proposals Are Supported By Past Performance

I call your attention to Ezra Klein’s column in the Washington Post this morning.In it he cites data that has been out there for a long time but Ezra puts some perspective on it that never occurred to me before.Examining the Kaiser Family Foundation brief, “Health Care Spending in the United States and Selected OECD Countries” he points out, “Our government spends more [as a percentage of GDP] on

Earth to Republicans: You Are In Big Political Trouble Over the Ryan Medicare Plan

Update: The Wyden-Ryan Medicare Plan - Paul Ryan and Ron Wyden Blow the Medicare Reform Debate Wide Open! It should now be clear to Republicans they are in trouble over the Ryan Medicare plan.Yesterday, they lost a seat in a solid Republican New York House district. Their candidate had benefited from lots of money and House leadership attention. The big issue was the Ryan Medicare plan.All month,

Neither the Republicans Nor the Democrats Want to Face the Provider Cost Problem But Both Want to Dump the Problem on the Consumer

A key piece of Paul Ryan’s deficit reduction plan is to change Medicare as we know it. It appears his bold Medicare premium support proposal is failing to gain traction--it is dead as part of any deficit reduction deal this year. Worse, his Medicare proposal looks to be giving Democrats lots of political ammunition for the 2012 elections.What lies at the heart of Ryan’s Medicare difficulties is

The Budget Fight: It Will Be A Long Hot Summer, and Fall, and Winter…

The good news is that Democrats and Republicans are finally seriously engaged over the country’s fiscal crisis.And, each side is presenting a starkly different course for the voters to choose from.When it comes to the health care entitlements, Republicans want to cut the health care entitlement benefits and therefore ease the pressure on federal spending.Obama wants to largely leave the programs

Defined Contribution Health Care—The Conservatives' Silver Bullet

Conservatives are in a full court press these days telling us the answer to America’s out-of-control health care costs—and our fiscal crisis—is to move Medicare, Medicaid, and the tax code subsidy for private insurance to a defined contribution system.Instead of the federal government defining a benefit and then shouldering the cost of whatever that promise leads to (today’s defined benefit plan)

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Health Care Policy