Take a trip down memory lane, and watch Paul Ryan hand President Obama his head in a panel discussion at the White House Healthcare Summit in the run-up to Obamacare.
"Hiding spending does not reduce spending".
Ryan is a very smart and eloquent man. He gets it, and he knows how to explain it. If he did any more damage to Obama at this roundtable, the Secret Service would have jumped him. He's a serious threat to the socialist hacks running Washington.
The mainstream media has a big job on its hands. It will have to demonize Ryan (he kills kids, starves old ladies, enjoys the suffering of the poor, vivisects puppies... ) while at the same time not letting people hear exactly what he says.
They'll need to do two things:
1) They will minimize unfettered exposure of Ryan to the public. They will try very hard not to let him speak unimpeded.
2) When they can't silence him, they will edit his speech. They will use snippets carefully edited to misrepresent his proposals. The media has had plenty of practice lately with fraudulent editing-- altering the Zimmerman 911 tape in order to purposefully stir up race hate is a fine example-- so slandering Ryan and sabotaging our national discussion on the relationship between our government and our people shouldn't be too hard.
Ryan is a serious threat to the elites in media and government. They will stop at nothing to stop him.
Should be interesting.
"Hiding spending does not reduce spending".
Ryan is a very smart and eloquent man. He gets it, and he knows how to explain it. If he did any more damage to Obama at this roundtable, the Secret Service would have jumped him. He's a serious threat to the socialist hacks running Washington.
The mainstream media has a big job on its hands. It will have to demonize Ryan (he kills kids, starves old ladies, enjoys the suffering of the poor, vivisects puppies... ) while at the same time not letting people hear exactly what he says.
They'll need to do two things:
1) They will minimize unfettered exposure of Ryan to the public. They will try very hard not to let him speak unimpeded.
2) When they can't silence him, they will edit his speech. They will use snippets carefully edited to misrepresent his proposals. The media has had plenty of practice lately with fraudulent editing-- altering the Zimmerman 911 tape in order to purposefully stir up race hate is a fine example-- so slandering Ryan and sabotaging our national discussion on the relationship between our government and our people shouldn't be too hard.
Ryan is a serious threat to the elites in media and government. They will stop at nothing to stop him.
Should be interesting.
The trouble here is that Ryan is "eviscerating" a plan that is very different than the plan in place now. Why does Romney now say that Obama is cutting $700 billion from Medicare? Because when they asked the CBO what would happen if they repealed the ACA, the CBO responded that Medicare costs would go up by a little more than $700 billion.
ReplyDeleteFor all Ryan's bluster, he's out of his league when it comes to dealing with the federal budget.
@anon:
ReplyDelete[The trouble here is that Ryan is "eviscerating" a plan that is very different than the plan in place now. Why does Romney now say that Obama is cutting $700 billion from Medicare? Because when they asked the CBO what would happen if they repealed the ACA, the CBO responded that Medicare costs would go up by a little more than $700 billion.]
Gibberish. The ACA shifts 716 billion dollars out of Medicare over the next decade.
[For all Ryan's bluster, he's out of his league when it comes to dealing with the federal budget.]
Ryan is the House Budget Committee chairman. He is the league, pinhead.
Ryan is the House Budget Committee chairman.
DeleteHe holds the title, but he lacks the knowledge. He's in deep over his head. He has no idea how the federal budget actually works, and demonstrates this every time he opens his mouth.
The ACA shifts 716 billion dollars out of Medicare over the next decade.
DeleteThe only gibberish here is coming from you and Ryan. The ACA reduces medicare spending by lowering reimbursement rates. That's less money coming out of the government's pocket. It is telling that Ryan's proposed "plan" keeps all of these changes to reimbursements as part of its claimed savings, but because he can't claim credit for them as part of the ACA, they are somehow bad.
Ryan is in way over his head when it comes to budgeting. He thinks he can lie about his budget proposals and the budget proposals of others and no one will notice.
Ryan is a heartless fraud. Very similar to Egnor - no wonder he drools all over Ryan.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to the skeletons coming out of the closet soon enough!
Right. Paying your bills is so... heartless!
DeleteRyan’s budget is a crock of shit. It’s a conservative wet dream for those who want to see the country ruled by a small band of very rich white men. Ecumenists, the CBO, and Reagan’s budget chief all agree that Ryan’s budget is pure fantasy.
ReplyDeleteThe unspecified trillions raised by closing tax loopholes will disproportionately hurt the poor and middle class in order to give massive tax breaks to the rich. How much more evidence do we need that trickle-down economics don’t work?
The hypocrisy of blaming Obama for cutting Medicare due to savings under the affordable care act, while planning to gut Medicare is astounding. Letting old people die as a result of massive cuts to Medicare by turning it into a voucher system so they can give more tax cuts for the Rich isn’t going to go over well with most Americans.
-KW
@KW:
ReplyDelete[It’s a conservative wet dream for those who want to see the country ruled by a small band of very rich white men.]
Do you dems have to inject race into everything?
I see that you don't agree with Ryan's plan.
How do you propose to pay for the more than a hundred trillion (with a "t") dollars of unfunded liability in Medicare and Social Security?
Is 'paying your bills' a nefarious scheme by rich white men?
Remove the $110,000 cap on taxable income for Social Security, and replace Medicare with a single payer “Medicare for all” to bring our costs in line with the rest of the developed world, problem solved.
ReplyDelete-KW
@KW:
ReplyDelete"Remove the $110,000 cap on taxable income for Social Security"
Here's your answer: [http://www.economics21.org/commentary/why-raising-social-securitys-tax-cap-wouldnt-eliminate-its-shortfall]
See especially #2. None of the variants of raising the cap actually make SS solvent.
[replace Medicare with a single payer “Medicare for all” to bring our costs in line with the rest of the developed world, problem solved.]
It seems odd to propose that a fix for a system we cannot afford is to make the system an order of magnitude larger.
One may argue that single payer would provide efficiencies, cost-control etc., but it strains credibility to assert that the federal government-- currently with a debt of 16 trillion and an annual deficit of over one trillion-- will make a system more efficient by running it.
Of course, costs could be controlled by denial of services.
This is a debate worth having. Dems will never allow it, because they will be fully occupied making campaign ads showing Ryan pushing old ladies off cliffs to actually make their case.
Michael,
DeleteWhere do you get your figures? America spends 16% of GDP on healthcare, and doesn't manage to cover around 40 million citizens (pre reform). Australia spends 9.1% of GDP on healthcare, which is universal coverage. It's largely covered by a single national government insurance funded through general government revenue, with additional optional private insurance.
America's GDP is around 15 trillion dollars a year, so healthcare costs around 2.4 trillion dollars per year, so if unfunded Medicare and social security is a hundred trillion dollars, then there must be a lot of social security liability.
America is very much an outlier amongst developed countries, providing the worst healthcare outcomes for the most expensive healthcare systems.
Your "figures" are a mishmash of nonsense and propaganda. The US undoubtedly spends more on healthcare than any other country. We want good care and we pay for it.
DeleteThe US does not have the worst outcomes. Those figures are driven mostly by life expectancy figures, which are so badly used they are dishonest. We have high crime rates and many violent deaths among our young men in cities, and high accident rates on our roads, none of which has shit to do with healthcare. When you correct for this, we have the best life expectancies.
Similarly, infant mortality cannot be compared, because of major differences in the efforts made in different countries to save preemies. We try hard, even for babies who have little chance of survival, and this brings our stats down. Many other countries don't even try with very small preemies, and they are not included in the mortality.
We have an enormous problem with illegal immigrants who crowd our hospitals (I care for many in my hospital). Their care is very expensive. Few other countries have this burden to the extent that we do.
Universal systems control costs by limiting care, and these problems are rarely discussed by proponents of socialist systems.
Our system can be improved, but not by socialist means.
Michael,
DeleteAustralia has universal cover and doesn't limit care. Recently, the government covered the costs of a liver, pancreas and bowel transplant in an 8 year old who'd been on total parenteral nutrition since birth because of long segment Hirschsprung's disease.
Treatment, if it can be demonstrated to be effective, isn't made dependent on the patient having the means to pay for it.
What figures do you have supporting your assertion that America's woeful health outcomes are due to the number of violent and road traffic deaths and premature baby deaths, not included in other countries' statistics? And where did you get your $100 trillion plus unfunded healthcare and social security?
Asking Egnor to back up his assertions with numbers? You're gonna wait forever.
Delete