Democrats Need to Show Some Guts and Honesty

Democrats are giddy over winning the special congressional election in New York State's deeply red 26^th district. Even given a third party candidate possibly siphoning off Republican votes, the Democrat's showing was impressive.



The winning candidate as well as party pros believe Rep. Paul Ryan's budget plan killing off Medicare as we know it was the determining factor.



That plan proposes subsidies, with no guarantee of future cost of service adjustments, to seniors who will be left to fend for themselves in the for-profit health care insurance jungle paying at least three times their current co-pays by 2030. This Medi-sham looks suspiciously like the private health care insurance racket that has brought us skyrocketing premiums, preexisting conditions riders, canceled policies and massive profits for the Republicans' industry benefactors.



This so-called solution merely shifts the cost of health care from government to individuals. It does nothing about the real problem, which is not about who pays but who and what gets paid for. The bipartisan Congressional Budget Office says the plan will actually increase administrative costs from the current 2-4 percent for traditional Medicare to the 12 percent or more similar to what the government reimburses private insurers to manage Medicare Advantage to which Ryan likens his voucher plan.



Ryan contemptuously exempts anyone 55 and older with the idea of quelling blowback from my fellow codgers. What he forgot is that 70-year-olds have kids; the "kids" may be 45 or 50 but their parents don't want them living out their old age with all the assurances of an old west traveling medicine wagon.



But Democrats are foolhardy to think they can rest on their laurels. When it comes to saving Medicare they have no laurels on which to rest. They have offered nothing beyond the $500 billion in Medicare cuts under their health care plan which ironically Republicans -- who would six months later adopt the Ryan plan to kill Medicare -- relentlessly hammered Democrats with in the 2010 elections as "killing Medicare." I wonder if Ryan's coupons will cover Death Panel consults?



People may not want to trade in Medicare for Medi-sham but they're not dummies. They know the Medicare Trust Fund will run out of cash in 12 years.



Here're their alternatives. Put their future health care security into the hands of the same people who have been trying to obliterate that security since the inception of Medicare in the 1960s. Or accept some tough measures like means testing, higher co-pays, altered eligibility, increased premiums and changes in certain medical procedures to save it.



President Obama and congressional Democrats need to show some guts and honesty and produce as serious a proposal as Ryan's, addressing in very specific terms their solution to saving Medicare.