Fix Health Care Policy

“Lie of the Year” – Democrats’ Claims about Medicare Reform

Politics is home to some pretty exaggerated accusations, and this year was no exception, particularly in the area of health care. Case in point: Democrats’ claim that “Republicans voted to end Medicare.” In fact, the assertion was so off the wall that PolitiFact.com named it “Lie of the Year 2011.”

Democrats made the claim about House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) FY 2012 “Path to Prosperity” budget, which included a proposal to provide premium support to Medicare enrollees, helping them to purchase a health care plan of their choice. PolitiFact reports on the left’s response to the proposal:

Democrats pounced. Just four days after the party-line vote, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee released a Web ad that said seniors will have to pay $12,500 more for health care “because Republicans voted to end Medicare.” 

(Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: Lie of the Year, Medicare reform, Politifact.com, premium support, Rep. Paul Ryan

Ryan-Wyden: The Basic Ingredients of Structural Medicare Reform

Congressman Paul Ryan (R–WI) and Senator Ron Wyden (D–OR) have proposed a new bipartisan framework for structural Medicare reform. It continues the conversation with the American people on a solution to save the popular but financially troubled entitlement program.

While there are differences between the proposal and the Heritage plan outlined in Saving the American Dream, and while their proposal does not go as far or as fast as it should in changing the massive entitlement program, it would establish a premium-support system of financing for Medicare, a variant of a defined contribution toward the health care plans chosen by retirees. This policy is central to the transformation of Medicare into a consumer-based system relying on competition rather than bureaucratic fiat.

Also, similar to the Heritage proposal, government payment for health coverage would be based on competitive bidding among health plans, and Medicare would be put on a budget. This is a crucial improvement in the functioning of the program, because pricing would be determined by market competition rather than by Washington bureaucrats.  (Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: competition, consumer-based health care, defined contribution, Medicare, premium support, Rep. Paul Ryan, Saving the American Dream, Sen. Ron Wyden

Online Chat on Obamacare and Medicare Reform

Read our “Lunch with Heritage” chat with Health Policy Analyst Kate Nix. The Obama Administration recently said that part of Obamacare, the CLASS Act, would no longer go into effect. Also, in a speech at Heritage yesterday, Paul Ryan mentioned the need to reform Medicare. Join right now as Kate takes your questions about the CLASS Act, what it means for the future of Obamacare, and how Medicare should be reformed. (See the full transcript on The Foundry…)

Tags: CLASS Act, Medicare, ObamaCare, Rep. Paul Ryan

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) Outlines a New Paradigm for Health Care Reform

Yesterday, Representative Paul Ryan (R–WI) shared his outlook for repealing and replacing Obamacare.

Ryan pointed out that rising health care costs not only make insurance unaffordable for many Americans; they are also a main driver of growing federal deficits. As medical inflation pushes the cost of insurance and medical goods and services sky high, the cost to taxpayers of Medicare, Medicaid, and the new open-ended entitlements created in Obamacare goes up as well.

Adequately addressing rising costs will require pinpointing the root causes of medical inflation. Ryan defined these as over-utilization, under-payments, and inefficiency stemming from the detachment of consumers from the costs of their health decisions in a third-party system. The irony, as Ryan put it, is that “the system that shields us from the cost of services has actually left us paying more.”  (Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: consumer-driven care, health reform, Rep. Paul Ryan, repeal Obamacare, replace, rising costs

Paul Ryan Schools HHS Secretary on Patient-Centered Medicare Reform

This morning, the House Budget Committee invited Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to a hearing on the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), the left’s weapon of choice for tackling Medicare’s $38 trillion in unfunded promises to America’s seniors.

Both sides of the debate agree that extensive reductions to Medicare’s runaway spending are needed, and have even proposed comparable targets for growth in spending. The key difference, then lies in who makes the difficult decisions regarding seniors’ health care under the chosen direction for reform: Patients, or bureaucrats?  (Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: consumer-driven health care, HHS Sec. Kathleen Sebelius, IPAB, Medicare, ObamaCare, Rep. Paul Ryan, runaway spending

VIDEO: Ryan Goes on Offense, from the White House to the U.S. House

“We have a budget crisis. We’ve got a $1.5 trillion deficit. We’ve got a debt that is getting out of our control. And what do you do when you have a problem like that? You pass a budget,” said House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) Wednesday from the House floor.

His remarks came hours after a meeting between House Republicans and President Barack Obama, where Ryan reportedly took the President to task over the continued demagoguery from the left over Ryan’s plan to reform Medicare. The Washington Post reports on Ryan’s remarks following the meeting, in which he described his exchange with the President:

I simply explained what our plan is, how it works,” Ryan said, standing before a bank of cameras outside the White House. “It’s been misdescribed by the president and many others. So we simply described to him what it is we’ve been proposing so that he hears from us how our proposal works.” (Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: budget crisis, House budget, Medicare reform, Rep. Paul Ryan

VIDEO: Rep. Ryan and the Truth About Medicare

When it comes to the budget, there’s fact and fiction, distortions and reality. And today, the left has been lobbing lies about Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) House-passed Fiscal Year 2012 Budget – The Path to Prosperity – alleging that it puts Medicare at risk.

In a new video, Chairman Ryan lays out the truth behind his budget plan. And in a statement today, Ryan noted:

This video lays out the clear choice our nation faces on Medicare: Will Medicare become a program in which a board of bureaucrats manages its bankruptcy by denying care to seniors? Or will leaders work together to save and strengthen Medicare by empowering seniors to choose health care plans that work best for them, with less support for the wealthy and more help for the poor and the sick? (Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: 2012 budget, Medicare, ObamaCare, premium assistance program, Rep. Paul Ryan

Rep. Paul Ryan: The Way Forward on Health Care Reform

While President Obama and congressional liberals have yet to come down from the high of passing their historically horrible health care legislation, conservatives are still hard at work promoting health care reform. This is because with its numerous new taxes, mandates, penalties, regulations, and new role for government, Obamacare can hardly be called reform. Instead, the recently passed law is more likely to aggravate existing problems and create new ones for our health care system, not to mention add staggering new amounts to the federal deficit.

One crusader still hard at work is Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). In an article published last week in the New York Times, Rep. Ryan writes, “To be clear: it is not sufficient for those of us in the opposition to await a reversal of political fortune months or years from now before we advance action on health care reform. Costs will continue their ascent as the debt burden squeezes life out of our economy. We are unapologetic advocates for the repeal of this costly misstep. But Republicans must also make the case for a reform agenda to take its place, and get to work on that effort now.” (more…)

Tags: greater government control, mandates, new taxes, ObamaCare, patient choice, penalties, pre-existing conditions, reform tax treatment, regulations, Rep. Paul Ryan

Health Reform That Breaks the Bank

During last month’s Blair House health care summit, President Barack Obama was forced to change the subject after Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) Blair House thoroughly refuted the President’s claim that his health care plan would reduce the deficit. It took over a week for the White House to respond to Ryan, but last Thursday they finally produced this blog post by OMB director Peter Orszag followed by a Washington Post op-ed Friday titled: Health reform that won’t break the bank. Ethics and Public Policy Center fellow James Capretta responded to the White House that same day at NRO:

“Orszag and DeParle start by agreeing with Ryan that delaying the start date of an entitlement expansion is a tried-and-true budget gimmick, designed to push the full cost of the additional spending outside of the ‘budget window’ covered by a cost estimate.” (more…)

Tags: bend cost curve, double-counting, Health Care Summit, health insurance exchange, high-cost insurance plans, Medicare, Rep. Paul Ryan

The Senate Bill’s Fiscal Madness: Rep. Ryan’s Damning Indictment

As Heritage analysts have noted time and again, spending from congressional liberals’ health care proposals would be in the trillions, growing the federal deficit. The President has proposed a modification of the Senate bill with provisions that would make it even more expensive. At last week’s Health Care Summit, hosted by the White House, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) echoed these same concerns over the true cost of the President’s proposal for health care reform. Thus far, neither the President nor the leaders of Congress- not one- have responded to Ryan’s indictment:

• Budget Gimmicks Galore: “[W]hat has been placed in front of [CBO] is a bill that is full of gimmicks and smoke-and-mirrors…first off, the bill has 10 years of tax increases, about half a trillion dollars, with 10 years of Medicare cuts, about half a trillion dollars, to pay for six years of spending…Now, what’s the true 10-year cost of this bill in 10 years? That’s $2.3 trillion.”
• Double-Counted Savings: “It takes $52 billion in higher Social Security tax revenues and counts them as offsets. But that’s really reserved for Social Security. So either we’re double-counting them or we don’t intend on paying those Social Security benefits…It takes $72 billion and claims money from the CLASS Act. That’s the long-term care insurance program. It takes the money from premiums that are designed for that benefit and instead counts them as offsets.” Later, Rep. Ryan went on to point out, “You can’t say that you’re using this money to either extend Medicare solvency and also offset the cost of this new program. That’s double counting.” (more…)

Tags: CLASS Act, doc fix, Health Care Summit, Medicare cuts, President's proposal, Rep. Paul Ryan, Social Security tax