How Much Will It Cost Your District To Do Paul Ryan's Version Of "Nothing?"

Handy-dandy interactive map shows the impact to each Congressional District of the Medicare and Medicaid cuts that Paul Ryan is trying to make you believe is really no change at all.

Ryan's 1st District here.

Tammy Baldwin's 2nd District here with just a few highlights.

All the rest.

Crossposted at The Happy Circumstance

Ryan budget committee colleague: Ryan plan would kill Medicare

Paul D. Tonko (D-NY), a House Budget Committee member, on Politico:

Even the Wall Street Journal admitted that the Republican plan would kill Medicare.

It would turn over seniors’ health to bureaucrats at profit hungry insurance companies. It would ask seniors to pay more for their health care benefits while receiving less and less. According to the Congressional Budget Office, it would more than double out of pocket expenses.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research suggests that for those under the age of 55, they will have to save an extra $182,000 for retirement to pay for their health care costs if the Republican plan is enacted. For those in their thirties, they will have to save an extra $400,000, on top of regular retirement savings, to pay for health insurance in their golden years.

And to suggest that the Republican budget will offer the same health plan that Members of Congress receive to seniors is simply untrue. As a member of Congress, I know that members of Congress have 72% of health insurance premiums that can be paid for by the federal government. Meanwhile, the Ryan plan would only cover 32% of the costs for seniors. This simply is not the same level of coverage.

Hometown paper, Janesville Ostrich, boosts Ryan

It's a little early to be endorsing for 2012, but this Janesville Gazette gusher of an editorial certainly sounds like the paper is already in the tank for hometown hero Paul Ryan.

How do we love thee?  Be still, my heart, and let us count the ways ... intelligent .. well-spoken .. has the courage of his convictions ...

This Janesville native will keep providing stellar constituent service. He’ll continue to openly explain complex policy issues. And he’ll keep leading debate on reforming and saving our entitlement programs and averting a debt crisis.

And he's dead wrong on the issues, but what does that matter when you're madly  in love?

Barf.

RoJo, totally off message, says Ryancare is a voucher

While Paul Ryan was at the White House whining that Democrats are calling his Medicare plan a voucher program, Sen. Ron Johnson, soon to be Wisconsin's senior Senator, was at the Appleton Post Crescent.

Johnson, asked what he liked about Ryan's plan, said:

What I like about the Paul Ryan plan is it's trying bring a little bit of free- market principles back into Medicare.

If you need subsidized care, we'll give you vouchers. You figure out how you want to spend. You select what insurance carrier you want to use. It's a start.

Greg Sargent at the Washington Post has a little fun with it.

Why Paul Ryan Is Losing Health Care Battle

The Washington Post's E. J. Dionne explains that Americans have witnessed the successes of Medicare and see no reason to substitute the private insurance industry - - which they already and correctly distrust.

The ideological free-marketeer Paul Ryan has therefore picked the wrong side of what polls say is an 80-20 split.

And this is the GOP's much-touted really smart guy? Yipes.

What did Ryan tell Obama? Not much, it turns out

A lot of hype and not much substance in the second hand reports of an Obama-Ryan exchange during a private White House meeting of the President and GOP leaders.  Or, as Gawker put it, Paul Ryan brought his sad face to the White House.

Did Ryan really call Obama a demagogue? Was it a smackdown?

Far from it.

"Hey, I'm that Ryan guy," Ryan said at the start of his remarks at the meeting, according to a Republican aide, the LA Times said:

Later, speaking to reporters, Ryan was asked if he had told Obama that he hadn't shown leadership on budget issues.

"That's not exactly what I said," he responded. "I said we've got to take on this debt and if we demagogue each other at the leadership level, then we're never going to take on our debt."

Ryan went on to say that Obama has "mischaracterized" his Medicare plan when talking publicly about it. So he said he explained to Obama how the plan works, in the hopes that "in the future he won't mischaracterize it."

"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."

Did Obama agree that the Republican Medicare proposal is not a voucher plan?

"He didn’t mention one way or the other," Ryan said.

So is it a voucher? Maybe not, technically, but it has the same impact. If it makes Ryan feel better maybe Dems can call it a 'voucher-like" program. Politico explains:

Is it a voucher? Technically, no. Ryan’s plan is something called “premium support.” Unlike a voucher, where the money goes to the person, premium support is a subsidy that goes directly to the health insurance company.

What’s the difference? In Ryan’s view, there’s a huge difference. Ever since the House Budget Committee chairman first started promoting the budget plan before its release in April, he has insisted that his Medicare plan is premium support, not a voucher. The difference, to Ryan, is that premium support is more like the health care plans for members of Congress, or the Medicare prescription drug program — where consumers can pick which plan they want and the federal government pays for it.

In practical terms, though, that distinction probably won’t make much of a difference to seniors’ pocketbooks. “Voucher” is a politically loaded term because it suggests to people that the money won’t keep up with their costs.

That’s exactly what would happen under Ryan’s premium support plan, according to the Congressional Budget Office. It said a typical senior would pay 68 percent of his or her Medicare costs in 2030 under the Ryan plan, compared to 25 to 30 percent of the costs under the current system — because the amount of Medicare spending would be controlled so it wouldn’t grow so fast.

Meanwhile, Leonard Berman on Forbes is reduced to fabricating a conversation Obama and Ryan could have had, but didn't. Read it here.

Will Ryan cost GOP some Wisconsin House seats, too?

Joel McNally asks in Milwaukee's Shepherd Express:

If Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan can help to lose a congressional election in an overwhelmingly Republican district in New York, is there any reason to believe Ryan couldn't lose a few congressional seats in Wisconsin, including his own?

...In elections all across the country next year, just as in New York, Republicans will have to try to explain away their continued support for Ryan's proposal to destroy Medicare.

So why not in Wisconsin? Two first-term Republican congressmen, Sean Duffy and Reid Ribble, voted in lockstep for Ryan's destruction of Medicare. Voters should demand they answer for it.

And Ryan himself has a serious challenger, Kenosha County Supervisor Rob Zerban, who is launching his campaign with a petition to preserve Medicare at the pointed website handsoffmygrandma.com.

Ryan has become an important national figure, all right. He's the best campaign ad Democrats have for regaining control of the House of Representatives.

Read it here.

Ryan ignores Constitution, votes for permanent war

The Capital Times takes Paul Ryan to task for voting against Constitutional checks and balances on the power to wage and declare war:

At issue was a section of the spending bill, quietly inserted by key players in Congress, that dramatically expanded the power of the president to wage wars of whim without congressional consideration.

The language was inserted by top Republicans in the House, despite the fact that it affronts the basic premises of the U.S. Constitution...

The House Republican leadership, working in conjunction with the chair of the House Armed Services Committee, Buck McKeon, R-Calif., included in the 2012 defense authorization bill language that effectively declares a state of permanent war against unnamed and ill-defined foreign forces “associated” with the Taliban and al-Qaida...

[James] Madison observed in the founding years of the American experiment: “Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

The Madisonian impulse was kept alive last week not by pretenders like Paul Ryan who claim to revere the Constitution while abandoning its principles, but by those members of Congress like Tammy Baldwin who object to permanent war for the same reasons that the wisest of the founders did.

Ryan's immoral plan plays into hands of insurers

Dave Zweifel in The Capital Times:

Just like with oil, health care in America is a convoluted, tightly controlled system that the industry insiders want to keep just as it is. And Ryan’s plan would play perfectly into their hands.

To suggest that our senior citizens should be thrown to the mercy of a health insurance industry that has made a practice of rationing care, denying benefits and excluding those with previous illnesses, all at an administrative cost of more than 20 percent of every health care dollar, is not only ludicrous but immoral.

Read it here.

Ryan's plan a death wish for GOP: Donald Trump

Not that he's the most insightful or best strategic thinker in the Republican camp, but Donald Trump might be on to something. We hope so -- especially when he says "half these guys" who voted for the Ryan plan are "going to lose their seats."

Think Progress has the story and video.

Draft Ryan Now launches

Here we go. Hotline reports:

[A group of monied types is launching DraftRyanNow.com, an online petition -- and, they hope, national movement -- to coax House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., into the contest.

The group is headed by Denison Smith, a northern Virginia-based communications investor, and Charles Kozak, a Nevada lawyer and GOP political activist who briefly sought his state's GOP Senate nomination last year before throwing his support to Sharron Angle. The group, which includes members from the early-voting states of Iowa and Florida, and has "top-flight" online communications skills to get the movement launched, Smith told National Journal.

They like Herman Cain, too, and think Cain and Ryan could be a great ticket.

Really.

Zerban building a race against Ryan

Roll Call reports:

Rob Zerban thinks he can knock off a Wisconsin giant next fall.

And Democrats on Capitol Hill agree that this 42-year-old businessman, a former Republican with limited experience in county politics, could be their best shot at defeating House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R) in more than a decade.

The only one unconvinced, it seems is Ryan:

[Zerban] recalled that he bumped into Ryan on a flight to Washington, D.C., in early May.

“I said, ‘I think I’m going to be your opponent in this next cycle.’ He said, ‘I look forward to running against you, if you make it through your primary,’” Zerban said, laughing. “I said, ‘You know, Paul, I don’t think I’m going to have a primary.’”

Wishful thinking?

Read it here.

Courage Evaluation Finds Ryan Lacking

Let's limit the appellation "courageous" to the deserving.

Medicare wrecker Paul Ryan needs a different label.

Self-absorbed comes to mind, despite those who worship him.

Paul is Not one of the Apostles

I wrote recently of the USCCB and Archbishop Listecki standing up for the rights of workers in Wisconsin. While many people(including myself) have had criticisms of the Catholic Church(and rightly so), they are at it again and must be(again) commended this time!

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops raising serious concerns about how the Paul Ryan budget would affect the poor and more vulnerable members of society.

Ryan has proven that any criticism of him results in immediate \"hissy fits\" and will not be allowed! Catholic Bishops being no exception to this rule, Ryan went on the attack. Congressman Ryan( R- Wall St.) fired off a letter to Archbishop Timothy DolanPaul Ryan, being the \"golden boy\" of republican politics, does not talk to minions so he went over the Bishop's heads to their boss.

Similiar to the way the \"tea party\" has completely misconstrued the Constitution, , paul ryan ( (R-Koch Brothers), has completely misconstrued Catholic Doctrine. Ryan tried to quote Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Centesimus Annus, as well as other documents in the church’s social Magisterium, in order to argue that his budget’s treatment of programs for poor and working families conforms with Catholic social teaching.

Archbishop Dolan replied: yea not so much!

“A singularly significant part of our duty as pastors is to insist that the cries of the poor are heard, and that the much needed reform leading to financial discipline that is recognized by all never adds further burdens on those who are poor and most vulnerable, nor distracts us from our country’s historic consideration of the needs of the world’s most suffering people. The late Blessed Pope John Paul II was clear about this when he said: ‘When there is question of defending the rights of individuals, the defenseless and the poor have a claim to special consideration.’ (Centesimus Annus, 10, citing Rerum Novarum, 37). In any transition that seeks to bring new proposals to current problems in order to build a better future, care must be taken that those currently in need not be left to suffer. I appreciate your assurance that your budget would be attentive to such considerations and would protect those at risk in the processes and programs of such a transition. While appreciating these assurances, our duty as pastors will motivate our close attention to the manner in which they become a reality.“

H/T Amy Sullivan

So now the two good friends, paul and Scott, have both upset the Catholic church. The difference is that, while Scott Walker ignored the church's request, Ryan decided to fight it and lied to Archbishop Dolan when confronted.

Cross Posted at Blogging Blue

Unlike William Edward Hickman, Paul Ryan Isn't Exactly A Serial Killer

Hopefully you've already seen the videos of Paul Ryan talking about how dystopian novelist Ayn Rand's profoundly anti-Christian ideas are what inspired him to leave his career as a marketing shill and enter politics. Ryan admits he "requests" that anyone who works for him read Rand's sick and perverted novels. But what Ryan has never publicly discussed is the inspirational relationship between serial murderer William Edward Hickman and Ayn Rand's work. Rand describes her hero in terms that any sociopath might admire-- and makes it very clear how someone like Paul Ryan could come up with a budget-- what he calls his "cause"-- that would destroy the lives of so many millions of working families.

"Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should," she wrote, gushing that Hickman had "no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel 'other people.'"

In Rand's make believe world Hickman is Republican Party icon Howard Roark. In real life politics, he is Clarence Thomas, Alan Greenspan, Rush Limbaugh and... unbeknownst to naive, dangerous pundits, Paul Ryan.

[L]et's meet William Hickman, the "genuinely beautiful soul" and inspiration to Ayn Rand. What you will read below-- the real story, details included, of what made Hickman a "superman" in Ayn Rand's eyes-- is extremely gory and upsetting, even if you're well acquainted with true crime stories-- so prepare yourself. But it's necessary to read this to understand Rand, and to repeat this over and over until all of America understands what made her tick, because Rand's influence over the very people leading the fight to kill social programs, and her ideological influence on so many powerful bankers, regulators and businessmen who brought the financial markets crashing down, means her ideas are affecting all of our lives in the worst way imaginable.

Rand fell for William Edward Hickman in the late 1920s, as the shocking story of Hickman's crime started to grip the nation. He was the OJ Simpson of his day; his crime, trial and case were nonstop headline grabbers for months.

Hickman, who was only 19 when he was arrested for murder, was the son of a paranoid-schizophrenic mother and grandmother. His schoolmates said that as a kid Hickman liked to strangle cats and snap the necks of chickens for fun -- most of the kids thought he was a budding manic, though the adults gave him good marks for behavior, a typical sign of sociopathic cunning. He enrolled in college but quickly dropped out, and turned to violent crime largely driven by the thrill and arrogance typical of sociopaths: in a brief and wild crime spree that grew increasingly violent, Hickman knocked over dozens of gas stations and drug stores across the Midwest and west to California. Along the way it's believed he strangled a girl in Milwaukee and killed his crime partner's grandfather in Pasadena, tossing his body over a bridge after taking his money. Hickman's partner later told police that Hickman told him how much he'd like to kill and dismember a victim someday-- and that day did come for Hickman.

One afternoon, Hickman drove up to Mount Vernon Junior High school in Los Angeles, telling administrators he'd come to pick up "the Parker girl"-- her father, Perry Parker, was a prominent banker. Hickman didn't know the girl's first name, so when he was asked which of the two Parker twins, he answered, "the younger daughter." Then he corrected himself: "The smaller one."

No one suspected his motives. The school administrator fetched young Marion, and brought her out to Hickman. Marion obediently followed Hickman to his car as she was told, where he promptly kidnapped her. He wrote a ransom note to Marion's father, demanding $1,500 for her return, promising the girl would be left unharmed. Marion was terrified into passivity-- she even waited in the car for Hickman when he went to mail his letter to her father. Hickman's extreme narcissism comes through in his ransom letters, as he refers to himself as a "master mind [sic]" and "not a common crook." Hickman signed his letters "The Fox" because he admired his own cunning: "Fox is my name, very sly you know." And then he threatened: "Get this straight. Your daughter's life hangs by a thread."

Hickman and the girl's father exchanged letters over the next few days as they arranged the terms of the ransom, while Marion obediently followed her captor's demands. She never tried to escape the hotel where he kept her; Hickman even took her to a movie, and she never screamed for help. She remained quiet and still as told when Hickman tied her to the chair-- he didn't even bother gagging her because there was no need to, right up to the gruesome end.

Hickman's last ransom note to Marion's father is where this story reaches its disturbing end. Hickman fills the letter with hurt anger over her father's suggestion that Hickman might deceive him, and "ask you for your $1500 for a lifeless mass of flesh I am base and low but won't stoop to that depth." What Hickman didn't say was that as he wrote the letter, Marion had already been chopped up into several lifeless masses of flesh. Why taunt the father? Why feign outrage? This sort of bizarre taunting was all part of the serial killer's thrill, maximizing his sadistic pleasure. But this was nothing compared to the thrill Hickman got from murdering the helpless 12-year-old Marion Parker. Here is an old newspaper description of the murder, taken from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on December 27, 1927:

"It was while I was fixing the blindfold that the urge to murder came upon me," he continued, "and I just couldn't help myself. I got a towel and stepped up behind Marion. Then before she could move, I put it around her neck and twisted it tightly. I held on and she made no outcry except to gurgle. I held on for about two minutes, I guess, and then I let go. When I cut loose the fastenings, she fell to the floor. I knew she was dead. Well, after she was dead I carried her body into the bathroom and undressed her, all but the underwear, and cut a hole in her throat with a pocket knife to let the blood out."

Another newspaper account explained what Hickman did next:

Then he took a pocket knife and cut a hole in her throat. Then he cut off each arm to the elbow. Then he cut her legs off at the knees. He put the limbs in a cabinet. He cut up the body in his room at the Bellevue Arms Apartments. Then he removed the clothing and cut the body through at the waist. He put it on a shelf in the dressing room. He placed a towel in the body to drain the blood. He wrapped up the exposed ends of the arms and waist with paper. He combed back her hair, powdered her face and then with a needle fixed her eyelids. He did this because he realized that he would lose the reward if he did not have the body to produce to her father.

Hickman packed her body, limbs and entrails into a car, and drove to the drop-off point to pick up his ransom; along his way he tossed out wrapped-up limbs and innards scattering them around Los Angeles. When he arrived at the meeting point, Hickman pulled Miriam's [sic] head and torso out of a suitcase and propped her up, her torso wrapped tightly, to look like she was alive-- he sewed wires into her eyelids to keep them open, so that she'd appear to be awake and alive. When Miriam's father arrived, Hickman pointed a sawed-off shotgun at him, showed Miriam's head with the eyes sewn open (it would have been hard to see for certain that she was dead), and then took the ransom money and sped away. As he sped away, he threw Miriam's head and torso out of the car, and that's when the father ran up and saw his daughter-- and screamed.

This is the "amazing picture" Ayn Rand -- guru to the Republican/Tea Party right-wing-- admired when she wrote in her notebook that Hickman represented "the amazing picture of a man with no regard whatsoever for all that a society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. A man who really stands alone, in action and in soul. Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should."

That's a classic definition of a sociopath-- even beyond no empathy... no people even exist for you. That's describes Ayn Rand and it describes the political agenda of Paul Ryan and the Republican Party. Yes-- they are that dangerous. As Mark Ames wrote in the Alternet post I've been quoting, "Too many critics of Ayn Rand-- until recently I was one of them-- would rather dismiss her books and ideas as laughable, childish, and hackneyed. But she can't be dismissed because Rand is the name that keeps bubbling up from the Tea Party crowd and the elite conservative circuit in Washington as the Big Inspiration. The only way to protect ourselves from this thinking is the way you protect yourself from serial killers: smoke the Rand followers out, make them answer for following the crazed ideology of a serial-killer-groupie, and run them the hell out of town and out of our hemisphere.

If you'd like to help Rob Zerban do just that in Janesville, Kenosha, Racine and throughout southeast Wisconsin, you can do it here. It matters, even if you can just contribute $5 or $10.

Ryan, Tea Party, demand “leaders” end Medicare as we know it!

Leaders don’t follow. They don’t listen to “popular” opinion, consider descent, see the many protesters or need to “follow” the will of the people. Leaders know what is good for the people, what is right, and aren't swayed by an out of touch "entitled" public.

That’s the Paul Ryan message. 

Ryan’s been very clear that he must lead the public away from what we know as self preservation, that instinctive but self-destructive human trait:

Leaders don’t have to listen. We’ve seen the Republican legislature and Scott Walker lead despite the massive protests to save collective bargaining from the budget ax. They are leading us from the error of our ways.

This is the rhetoric we’re hearing now, since Ryan has been hitting the concept hard in the media, the same media that hasn’t noticed. Most startling is how Ryan and the radical tea party movement have similar agendas now, one where leaders hold authority over the bumbling publics need for the overly generous Medicare program. 

A balanced budget is so much more important than the human carnage resulting from dismantling our entitlement programs. Ryan and the tea party are tough risk takers who lead:

Jamie Radtke, a Virginia tea-party candidate for the U.S. Senate wrote, “Take the tough and, yes, politically risky stand to put our economy back on track. We finally have conservatives in Congress who have the guts to lead … and Republicans need to embrace them. No more politics. Will you join me in full support of Paul Ryan's Path to Prosperity Plan?"

The Pied Piper was a great leader too, and you might remember how that ended.

Pawlenty sips the Ryan Kool Aid

Tim Pawlenty had avoided saying he'd support Paul Ryan's budget plan, also known as the Road to Ruin.

But then he told Christiane Amanpour on <a href="http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2011/05/tim-pawlenty-says-he-would-back-paul-ryans-medicare-plan.html">ABC's This Week </a> that while he will unveil his own budget plan during his presidential campaign:

“But if the only choice is we're doing nothing, like President Obama is doing and Paul Ryan's plan, I'd sign it.”

That is not the choice, of course. Obama and the Democrats will not propose doing nothing. Pawlenty is not the president, and not likely to be. Democrats will most likely continue to control the Senate, and won't be passing the Ryan budget anyway. So what he offered is meaningless.

But Pawlenty, trying to avoid endorsing the Ryan plan without alienating the right-wing Republicans who support it, and who threatened to tar and feather Newt Gingrich when he opposed it, has taken his first sip from the Ryan cup. Others will urge him to drink up.

Ezra Kein Breaks Down Paul Ryan's Gobbledygook. Ryan's Flim Flam revealed without all the numbers and demagoguery.

WashingtonPost: Let me begin by saying that though I’m eager to do an interview where we can really engage with one another’s arguments, I appreciate Paul Ryan response to my questions and hope we can continue the dialogue. In this post, I’m going to focus on his two most important arguments: 

”Our premium-support plan is modeled after the Medicare Part D prescription-drug program,” Ryan writes, “in which providers compete against each other for seniors’ business.” 

Let’s start with the costs. Since 2006 — the first year of the benefit — Medicare Part D’s average premium has risen by 57 percent (pdf). Between 2010 and 2011, premiums rose by 10 percent.  But it’s a lot faster than inflation, which is what Ryan needs for his plan to work. As the actuaries write, “The reduced estimates reflect a higher market penetration of generic drugs and a decline in the number of new drug products that are expected to reach the market during this period.” Another reason that the program’s costs came in lower than expected is that fewer people signed up. 

But the bigger issue is that Ryan’s plan is capped while Medicare Part D isn’t. In Part D, the federal government pays, on average, 74 percent of program’s costs. And that support grows alongside the program’s costs. Ryan’s plan covers about a third of beneficiary costs, and that support grows at the rate of inflation — much more slowly than the rest of the program, or than Medicare Part D.

Which brings us to the rest of the world. I asked Ryan how he could say that government control never works in health care when Germany, the Netherlands, France and other countries pay so much less, and get as much or more, than we do. Ryan’s reply:

"Canada’s health-care system consumed 40 percent of provincial budgets in 2010. The French health-care system has run deficits since 1989 and is currently facing a $15 billion shortfall. The British health-care system is cutting millions of scheduled operations because the government simply cannot afford to pay for them."

This is basically a dodge. First, he changed the countries: He moved to Canada and the United Kingdom rather than the examples I mentioned. Ryan’s wrong to draw an equivalence between our costs and theirs. In 2008, Canada spent about $4,000 per person, per year, on health care. The United Kingdom spent a bit more than $3,000. We spent about $7,400 … suggesting that we’re all facing the same sort of pressure is flatly wrong. When attacking the systems in other countries, he cherrypicks numbers to demonstrate they want to save money in the health-care systems but ignores the numbers showing that they spend half as much as we do. The result is that he gives people the wrong impression of both Medicare Part D and health systems across the world.

And saying this is all about “who should make the decision” is too simple by half, or perhaps by three-fourths. Under Ryan’s plan, the relevant decisions are made by whether you have the money to pay for what you need, whether your insurance provider says “yes” or “no,” and whether Congress decides to increase or decrease the size of the subsidies.

As he says elsewhere in his response, his plan is all about making Medicare less generous, about finishing off the open-ended, fee-for-service model he believes is driving costs. The reality is that if Ryan’s plan held growth to the same rate as Medicare Part D, it would implode, while if it closed 50 percent of the gap between our system and the Canadian system, it’d be a wild, unmitigated, unbelievable success. 

But that just underscores how important it is for us to be realistic about what we can do, clear-eyed about what has and hasn’t worked elsewhere, and open to ideas that don’t fit with our philosophical preferences. 

Is Everyone Having A Great Memorial Day Weekend?

oh, you need to click the image for the full impact

I guarantee you, Paul Ryan and the fascist Big Business cabal he fronts are not taking any time off from their cause-- enslaving the rest of us. If you have any spare change, please think about helping Rob Zerban's campaign to unseat Ryan in southeast Wisconsin.

Ryan's Budget Criticism Real, not Demagogued.

Rep. Paul Ryan's over use of the word Demagogue finally gets called out for what it is, a lie.

Michael Smerconish reveals that Ryan's definition of Demagogue is incorrect, and Ezra Klein reveals Ryan is wrong about describing his plan as a premium support program, instead of as a voucher. 

Can't Ryan get his own plan right, or is he in fact, demagoguing us?