Romney made a serious choice and I commend him for now making this election a national referendum on our nation's future. Do we continue down the progressive path of ruin, ending up as the Argentina of the north? Or do we face facts and begin dismantling the creaking, fiscally-unsustainable statist model?
From Paul Ryan's speech:
We won't replace our founding principles...we will reapply them!I thank Mitt Romney for putting the all-important questions front and center. Finally, American citizens will be forced to make a choice.
We will honor you, our fellow citizens, by giving you the right and opportunity to make the choice:
What kind of country do we want to have?
What kind of people do we want to be?
Ryan's Medicare Problem
Trouble lurks, though. Paul Ryan could scare away older voters and moderates with his dangerous meddling with medicare. Here's some analysis from the Medicare Chief Actuary:
* In his analysis accompanying the recently released Annual Report of the Medicare Board of Trustees, Richard Foster, Medicare's chief actuary, noted that Medicare payment rates for doctors and hospitals serving seniors will be cut by 30% over the next three years.
* ... by 2019 Medicare payment rates will be lower than under Medicaid. Mr. Foster notes that by the end of the 75-year projection period in the Annual Medicare Trustees Report, Medicare payment rates will be one-third of what will be paid by private insurance, and only half of what is paid by Medicaid.
* (The plan) cuts $818 billion from Medicare Part A (hospital insurance) from 2014-2023, the first 10 years of its full implementation, and $3.2 trillion over the first 20 years, 2014-2033. Adding in [...] cuts for Medicare Part B (physicians fees and other services) brings the total cut to $1.05 trillion over the first 10 years and $4.95 trillion over the first 20 years.
Slashing $5 trillion from medicare over 20 years! That's unconscionable! Anyone proposing such draconian cuts should be run off the national stage and declared unfit for anything higher than municipal dog catcher.
Ryan's problem? No. Obama's problem. The above projections, stated by Medicare's chief actuary, are about Obamacare, not Paul Ryan's common sense plan.
Source: Forbes - Ferrara
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