Collective Conscious

In short: “screw the seniors.” Ezra:

[House Bud­get Com­mit­tee Rank­ing Mem­ber Paul] Ryan’s bud­get does some­thing remark­able: It elim­i­nates the mas­sive long-​​term deficit.…

Ryan’s bud­get pro­poses reforms that are noth­ing short of vio­lent. Medicare is pri­va­tized. Seniors get a voucher to buy pri­vate insur­ance, and the voucher’s growth is far slower than the expected growth of health-​​care costs. Med­ic­aid is also pri­va­tized. The employer tax exclu­sion is fully elim­i­nated, replaced by a tax credit that grows more slowly than med­ical costs. And beyond health care, Social Secu­rity moves to a sys­tem of pri­vate accounts that CBO says will actu­ally cost more than the present arrange­ment, fur­ther under­scor­ing how ancil­lary the pro­gram is to our bud­get problem.…

But this is rationing, and that’s not a slur. This is the gov­ern­ment cap­ping its pay­ments and mod­er­at­ing their growth in such a way that many seniors will not get the care they need.

Finally! We have the Repub­li­can plan for health care, and it guar­an­tees less cov­er­age, higher prices, and aban­don­ment of seniors! Woohoo!

Update: Rep. Jim Hen­sar­ling con­firms the plan. How do they write this stuff with straight faces? I can only imag­ine a bunch of Repub­li­cans in a room laugh­ing and quot­ing lines that end in “…and reduce the sur­plus population!”