Ryan’s Vote

Mighty odd to flip-flop on a measure that has no chance of passing the Senate.

If you Google “paul + ryan + courageous”…
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About 433,000 results (0.10 seconds)

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If you Google “paul + ryan + moron”
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About 973,000 results (0.08 seconds)

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Scientific proof that Paul Ryan is more of a ‘moron’ than he is ‘courageous’!
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(Remember: It was courageous of me to put forth mathematical proof, even if the math is deceptive and an incomplete measure of Paul Ryan’s true courage to moron ratio)

“Democrats have done a decent job politicizing the Ryan budget, and scaring the heck out of seniors. The budget does envision turning Medicare into a voucher system which will result in some, impossible from this far out to determine, cuts in services. Those over 55 would be grandfathered in, so it wouldn’t affect the current generation. But seniors hear “cuts to Medicare” and blood pounds to their heads and they’re deaf to all other qualifiers. And Dems have been beating that mantra for weeks.”
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It would seem to me that you disagree that it would hurt seniors. It would also seem to me that you do not live in the same world as I do. It would also seem to me that you choose to ignore the fact that Seniors as a whole have higher healthcare costs, and sending them to the free market, as a group, separate from the general population, would mean that the cost of that policy would be much higher then would the cost for the younger group.
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The far out impossible to determine cuts are impossible for you to envision because at this time you do not have to worry about what cuts that you yourself will have to make. That is the beauty of the plan, we are not cutting services, the seniors will, depending on their income.
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To me, it seems, you have no soul.

“But seniors hear “cuts to Medicare” and blood pounds to their heads and they’re deaf to all other qualifiers.”
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You mean qualifiers like, “for your children and grandchildren”? Those silly, selfish, old fools.

That’s an effed up closing statement.

Are you kidding? The Ryan plan isn’t just deadly for Medicare and seniors. The soundbites will be murder for Republicans and they’re just figuring it out. I’m watching to see if even Ryan himself votes for it now. Pass the popcorn.

Your statement effed up and so is her position, and reporting. See it is all a matter of opinion.

One more post from JN-S that just baffles me. I am not asking you to be support Democrats or bash Ryan but at least ask for and have intellectual honesty. The interview of the Republican freshman was full of “soft” questions that just tried to make them look good. How can you not ask Buerkle where the hell is she coming with “Medicare and the fact that in six years it’s going to be defunct.”? and in a later post accuse Democrats of scaring seniors.
It is clear that both parties are playing the politics game but you, as a reporter, should try to bring facts to the discussion and claiming that the cuts in services resulting from the proposed voucher system are “impossible from this far out to determine” just shows that you don’t know about health care costs increases or simply want to make Ryan’s plan look reasonable. How can a voucher that grows with inflation continue to pay for services whose costs grow much faster? It is not hard to determine, just look at what has happened for the last 20 or more years!

No disagreement re opinions. To each, his/her own…

“It is clear that both parties are playing the politics game but you, as a reporter, should try to bring facts to the discussion and claiming that the cuts in services resulting from the proposed voucher system are “impossible from this far out to determine” just shows that you don’t know about health care costs increases or simply want to make Ryan’s plan look reasonable.”
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Very well put.
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The Ryan plan is complete tomfoolery: http://macroadvisers.blogspot.com/2011/04/economic-effects-of-ryan-plan-assuming.html

the macroeconomic analysis released in conjunction with the House Budget Resolution is not relevant to the coming discussion. We believe that the main result — that aggressive deficit reduction immediately raises GDP at unchanged interest rates — was generated by manipulating a model that would not otherwise produce this result, and that the basis for this manipulation is not supported either theoretically or empirically.

It is innumerate, impossible, and impractical, and under it, according to the CBO, “most elderly people would pay more for their health care than they would pay under the current Medicare system,” in part because the voucher proposals do not keep pace with health care cost inflation.
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These are facts.
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Why would Jay prioritize hectoring the Democrats for “politicizing” a political proposal, instead of prioritizing reporting accurate facts to Time readers?

Jay Newton-Small:
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You write:

The budget does envision turning Medicare into a voucher system

This is a quote from Paul Ryan’s “Path To Prosperity” 2012 budget proposal document

Premium support – a better way to deliver secure benefits
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Starting in 2022, new Medicare beneficiaries will be enrolled in the same kind of health care program that members of Congress enjoy. Future Medicare recipients will be able to choose from a list of guaranteed coverage options, and they will be given the ability to choose a plan that works best for them. This is not a voucher program, but rather a premium-support model.
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A Medicare premium-support payment would be paid, by Medicare, to the plan chosen by the beneficiary, subsidizing its cost.
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The premium-support model would operate similar to the way the Medicare prescription-drug benefit program works today. The Medicare premium-support payment would be adjusted so that wealthier beneficiaries would receive a lower subsidy, the sick would receive a higher payment if their conditions worsened, and lower-income seniors would receive additional assistance to cover out-of-pocket costs.
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This approach to strengthen the Medicare program ensures security and affordability for seniors now and into the future. First, it ensures security by setting up a tightly regulated exchange for Medicare plans. Health plans that choose to participate in the Medicare exchange must agree to offer insurance to all Medicare beneficiaries, to avoid cherry picking and ensure that Medicare’s sickest and highest-cost beneficiaries receive coverage. This reform builds upon the bipartisan Rivlin-Ryan Medicare reform plan advanced in the President’s Fiscal Commission in 2010.
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House Budget Committee | April 5, 2011
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http://paulryan.house.gov/UploadedFiles/PathToProsperityFY2012.pdf

How do you reconcile your characterization of the Ryan plan as “a voucher system” with its proposal of premium-support and guaranteed coverage through a (PPACA-style) Medicare exchange, Jay Newton-Small?
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Can you explain how it is that you arrived at your description of the Ryan plan as a “voucher system,” when the plan itself explicitly denies that is one, and offers an easily understood policy alternative –one that Democratic Think Tanks have been proposing for years?
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And, finally, can you help us understand why the President’s Fiscal Commission Chairs (Bowles-Simpson) released a report in which the careful consideration of Ryan’s proposed premium support/Medicare exchange plan was urged, and whether or not the Administration now rejects the counsel of its Commission’s report with respect to its consideration?
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Thanks so much for helping us engaged news users understand exactly how you arrived the description of a non-voucher system as “a voucher system,” Jay Newton-Small.

Good because I was careful to express it as my opinion and not as fact.

The Ryan system isn’t working for working people – hence the need for HCR – why would we expect different/better results for the elderly in the insurance market? Do republicans think the elderly and sick will just disappear when their under-valued voucher doesn’t cover the cost of their health needs?

This is a fine display of the concern that the republicans have for the America they’re leaving behind. They’ll screw their own parents and children for the sake of their ideology.

Mr. Ryan needs to put down the bong and his copy of Atlas Shrugged and grow up like the other folks that fell for ayn rand crap – it’s fiction paul!!!!!! Just like your “budget”.

Yes a form of genocide.

“Can you explain how it is that you arrived at your description of the Ryan plan as a “voucher system,” when the plan itself explicitly denies that is one…”
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Can you explain why “A Medicare premium-support payment,” at a fixed amount to buy private health insurance isn’t “a form or check indicating a credit against future purchases or expenditures (i.e., a voucher)“? Also, why anyone should accept Paul Ryan’s word for anything?

I’m not sure that it is soulless to soft-pedal the Republican plan to end Medicare but it is dishonest. Josh Marshall calls it a lie and he’s not fast and loose with that term in regard to his own profession.

“Democrats have done a decent job politicizing the Ryan budget, and scaring the heck out of seniors.”

Unlike the deathpanel BS to scare seniors this happens to be a fact, not just BS scaretactics.

Her dispassionate, snarky, comments about scaring seniors, especially mentioning that those over 55 would not be affected, so what do they have to complain about mentality, shows she hasn’t a clue about human nature, and how we seniors, after raising our young, and helping with the grand kids have a vested interest in their future as well. It angers me that she thinks we should be bought off.
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The message is clear, she and the GOP apparently do not care. I am sorry but to me it is soulless, I am not.

one of the inventors of premium support says that plan is more of a voucher system
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/creator-of-premium-support-says-ryan-has-vouchers-not-premium-support/2011/04/08/AFAVslLD_blog.html

Republican proposal for shutter Medicare and have seniors buy private insurance with the (not that much) help of vouchers. Basically, no one wants to provide that insurance. And frankly, why would they? How much money do you think there is in insuring 75 year olds? How many headaches? If you go back into the history of Medicare, one of the factors — in addition to the politics and ideological and social push — was that the private insurers wanted the senior portion of the population taken off their hands. And they still want it off their hands.
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http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/

allthings,
declaring today that JNS has no soul, and that vouchers=genocide…
*sigh*
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you need to get off the internet, go outside for some fresh air, make some conservative friends (not crazy internet ones) and get some perspective

Can you explain to me how the vouchers are going to extend, and not shorten the lives of those dependent on it?

Republicans “politicizing” = lying about Democrats.
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Democrats “politicizing” = telling the truth about Republicans

that’s a great point. it’s also a direct quote from TPM fyi though it doesn’t look like it

I forgot to put the quotes around it, but it should be obvious to anyone that it was cut and pasted. I did provide the link, and did not intend to fool anyone into thinking it was my writing.

The point is that it is the same proposal that B-S plan makes. And the point is that the “voucher” word has become poisonous, so any plan to decrease utilization by seniors by making them pay more their health care will not ever involve the use of the word “voucher.”
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Moreover, the plans that will emerge from the PPI style think tanks will, like Dole-Daschle/PPACA, involve moving seniors into exchanges, and moving away from the current single payer model.
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JNS is being suckered by some partisan (Democratic in this case) spin, that is intended to pack a double-whammy–poisoning the Ryan plan while preserving the plan to subsidize, on means-tested basis, seniors buying insurance in the private sector.

Dday’s Twitterstream tells me that says the GOP voted nearly in a bloc for the plan. 4 nays.

No, the point is that this plan breaks the Medicare compact, throws seniors into the for-profit insurance market and will be completely inadequate to fund their medical care as they age. And the mechanism is close enough to a voucher system to be able to call it one, not inaccurately or with very much spin (and the fact that it is “poison” works for me).

It also makes a wonderful differentiator between the aims of Republicans and Democrats. We’ll deal with “plans that will emerge from the PPI style think tanks,” when they emerge.

How about I let the fine pragmatists at Progressive Policy Institute explain what a voucher is?

http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?contentid=1430&knlgAreaID=111&subsecid=141
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PPI | Policy Report | September 22, 1995
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A New Deal for Medicare and Medicaid
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Building a Buyer’s Market for Health Care
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By David B. Kendall

# Medicare Vouchers. The basic thrust of voucher proposals is to allow beneficiaries to individually purchase health insurance in an amount roughly equal to current per capita Medicare spending. The federal government’s role would be limited to financing the voucher; its actual purchasing value would be determined by the marketplace.
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The advantage of vouchers is that they would both simplify the current system and eliminate its inefficiencies that encourage undisciplined demand, offer open-ended subsidies, and set arbitrary prices. The disadvantage lies in what gets substituted: an unregulated private insurance market, with its much higher administrative costs, risk-based pricing, and risk-skimming practices that leaves too many citizens unprotected. By dismantling Medicare’s collective purchasing power, vouchers would also expose many Medicare recipients to higher prices.

Key items:
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“individually purchase health insurance” vs “Medicare premium-support payment would be paid, by Medicare”
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“Vouchers” is checks written to beneficiaries, “premium-support” is Medicare paying the bills.
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“unregulated private insurance market” vs “a tightly regulated exchange for Medicare plans”
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The whole point of vouchers is to transfer beneficiaries to the private insurance market to be covered or not covered as the market dictates, as opposed to transferring them to a PPACA-style, federally-regulated, guaranteed-issue “exchange” in which private insurers create an exclusive set of plans that meet Medicare coverage criteria.
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“risk-based pricing and risk-skimming practices that leaves too many citizens unprotected” vs
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“Health plans that choose to participate in the Medicare exchange must agree to offer insurance to all Medicare beneficiaries, to avoid cherry picking and ensure that Medicare’s sickest and highest-cost beneficiaries receive coverage”
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Since vouchers are simply checks to go buy insurance in the individual health insurance market, buyers are at the mercy of whatever plans are offered to them at whatever price. Federally-subsidized plans in a Medicare exchange must meet criteria set by Medicare, which will specifically exclude policies that discriminate against high-cost beneficiaries…sound familiar? That’s the PPACA’s individual insurance exchanges, to be in place state-by-state by 2014.

Finally, “the voucher; its actual purchasing value would be determined by the marketplace” vs
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“The Medicare premium-support payment would be adjusted so that wealthier beneficiaries would receive a lower subsidy, the sick would receive a higher payment if their conditions worsened, and lower-income seniors would receive additional assistance to cover out-of-pocket costs.”
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In other words, nobody gets “a fixed amount to buy private health insurance.” Instead, Medicare pays premium-support that adjusts in response to the changing medical and/or financial situation of the individual.
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Although both of these policy proposals –vouchers and premium-support– are terrible ideas based on ideological fantasies about how economies should operate (instead of accurate assessments of the real problems with health care affordability our nation faces), they are different.
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One (vouchers) is pure privatization, the other (premium-support through exchanges) is not.
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One (vouchers) is the old, establishment GOP means to fundamentally restructure Medicare, and the other (premium support through exchanges) is the old, Third Way Democratic means to fundamentally restructure Medicare.
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See? They’re not the same thing at all.
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Look, powerful Democratic think tanks say so, since they have been proposing Medicare (and Medicaid) exchanges for as long as Republicans have been proposing vouchers:

# Medicare would be changed from a government-run, fee-for-service health insurance plan to a system in which Medicare beneficiaries would choose private health insurance plans, selected from menus offered by competing, voluntary private sector consumer cooperatives.
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The government would subsidize insurance purchases through individual Health Purchasing Accounts, at an amount set by the average price of competing plans, keyed to a benchmark benefit package, rather than to budgetary goals as Republicans have proposed. Beneficiaries could choose cheaper plans and secure broader coverage or cash rebates; or they could choose more expensive plans, including a fee-for-service option and pay a premium for the difference.
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This approach is superior to conservative proposals to voucherize Medicare in three crucial respects: It preserves Medicare’s collective purchasing power; it strengthens the position of individual beneficiaries through negotiation by cooperatives; and it protects the value of the subsidy against inflation.

The real question is not whether vouchers are bad or good (they’re insanely bad), or even whether premium-support in Medicare exchanges is bad or good (it’s insanely bad).
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The key question, the answer to which may help explain what’s going on, is: why is the Ryan plan being characterized as something it is not, when the substance of what it is is remarkably, horribly bad for the American people?
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Hopefully, the answer is not that Democrats are preparing settle in “the middle” between “vouchers” and “not-vouchers” by adopting what their think tanks have been advocating for decades: premium-support in Medicare exchanges.
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I’m not terribly hopeful, but there it is.

The people who also, concurrently with Brookings, invented premium-support, talk about how it isn’t vouchers, albeit before it just became a huge partisan blowup two days ago:
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http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?contentid=1430&knlgAreaID=111&subsecid=141
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Also, too…if vouchers are bad, is Ezra suggesting that premium-support is good?
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Why aren’t the Democrats coming out against both vouchers and premium-support, both of which are terrible policy ideas?
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Is it perhaps because some Democrats, perhaps even those in the Obama Administration, actually favor premium-exchange without the PPACA repeal found in Ryan’s budget?
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Unless and until Democrats specifically reject premium support, that question will remain unanswered, unfortunately.
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We liberal Democrats can yell to our hearts content “Vouchers = BAD, GOP plan = BAD,” but we must simultaneously yell “Premium Support & Medicare Exchange = ALSO REALLY BAD, Dem plan must be NOT BAD.”
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That leadership Democrats are being vague about what “NOT BAD” actually is means that it is possible that they are considering best how to engineer enactment of premium-support/Medicare exchanges. We must stop that from happening, by telling them NO, not just to Ryan’s plan, but to premium-support and exchanges.

Any word on who the nays were? Frankly, they are safe voting for it here. No damage because it won’t make it past senate. Funnily enough, I’m not seeing any love for it even from a lot of conservatives in webland. Maybe the real RWNs but not regular folk.

“Instead, Medicare pays premium-support that adjusts in response to the changing medical and/or financial situation of the individual.”
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Except that can’t happen if the the funding is both fixed and inadequate.

If one does the arithmetic, income grows a few percentage points faster than prices. Health-care spending grows faster than income by a couple of percentage points. So we’re looking at linking to an index that grows less rapidly than health-care costs by three to four percentage points a year. Piled up over 10 years, and that’s a huge erosion of coverage. It’s vouchers, not premium support.
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– Henry Aaron (the inventor of premium support)

I get your point that it could be even more voucher-like than it is but I’m not sure why you’re splitting this particular hair, though I’m leaning toward the obsessive hatred of Third Way Democrats that seems to make you reflexively want to conflate them with Republicans.

Looks like she voted for it afterall. Only 4 say no, including Ron Paul…no real shock there. And, of course, every Dem voted no.

Yes, Democrats are masters at scare tactics, and Obama leads by example on that, if nothing else. His speech was deplorable. Real nice touch inviting Ryan Paul to sit in the front row, then slam his plan through the entire speech. Real classy, eh?

Swiss, I am still waiting for that answer.

Also, Aaron says this, which is telling:

Ezra Klein: I think a lot of us have been confused by Paul Ryan’s insistence that his Medicare plan be called “premium support” rather than vouchers. It looks like vouchers. The Congressional Budget Office thought it was vouchers. So what’s the truth here?
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Henry Aaron: …Now Ryan is associated with at least three different plans.
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There was Rivlin-Ryan, plain old Ryan, and now there’s the Path to Prosperity. They’re all different.

In some ways, the Path to Prosperity plan improves on previous version, because the role of exchanges and risk adjustment is nearer to what we had in mind. But it is hands down the worst because it links premiums to consumer prices, which is the slowest growing index.

So, it seems that Aaron is saying something a little different than “Ryan plan = vouchers.”
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While stating unequivocally that it’s a terrible plan (for reasons with which I agree), it also seems that he’s saying that previous Ryan plans may be vouchers, but that the current “Path To Prosperity” is actually comparable to “what we had in mind.”
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Especially that “role of exchanges” part.
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…The part that we liberals must reject –loudly.

Let me also say that I completely understand why you hate Third-Way Democrats and what you are worried about here. But, if you think they are going to try to do something very similar to the Ryan plan and that plan has been defined as a voucher plan that destroys Medicare as we know it, isn’t that a good thing? After this, I don’t think Democrats ever could propose to turn Medicare over to the private insurance market in any fashion. And, if it will make you happy, I’ll be pleased to mis-label it a “voucher system” if they are ever stupid enough to try.

You know, I could lean toward an explanation of your refusal to acknowledge that leadership Democrats seem to be at pains to reject vouchers, yet leave room for embracing premium-support and exchanges (an unanswered question, still) being your obsessive, reflexive, partisan hatred of Republicans, but I won’t.
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I won’t attribute your arguments to your emotional or psychological state, because that’s precisely the kind of argument that partisans love to have. Partisans would much, much rather be explaining the world in the context of passionate, tribal support or opposition, and not policy goals.
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Anyway, who cares?
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Perhaps it’s projection, perhaps not. People’s loves or hates or cheap psychological profiles aren’t at issue.
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Premium support plus Medicare exchange must be vigorously rejected for the sh*t policy that it is, whether proposed by Republicans or Democrats.
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Agreed, shepherdwong?
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Are you prepared to oppose premium-support plus Medicare exchanges at the top of your f*cking voice, should Democrats attempt to enact it?

Republicans don’t like facts; they’ve lived in a he/she said media world where everything that’s said is a matter of opinion rather than true or BS. And after slamming the dems and the president on a daily basis for 2 years with the army of pundits filling the airwaves with hatred the GOP and their sycophant ideologue useful tools are shocked that someone would spell out their BS.
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It’s not so much that republicans do what they do, but their assault on working people, enriching corporations and wanting the population en large to take the austerity brunt isn’t exactly invisible. A clear majority have always felt that the rich and the corporations are getting away with murder and plunder, but now it’s apparent to everyone that their staunch ally is not interested in job growth, but the same baloney social conservatism that got their @sses kicked out of majority in 2006.
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Paul Ryans magic tricks is a bag of flaming sh!t and someone actually believed that people would step on it. But they’re not.
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And they truly see what the tea party is all about; they’re up front and out for corporations and Governors like Walker pushing through a partisan agenda but nar a word when it comes to the size and truth about the deficit. GOP is happily hunting the 10% discretionary spending, Paul Ryan wants to cut Medicare and Medicaid and at the same time increase our big pile of money waste; military budget.
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Welcome to the banana tea party republic.
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GOP have deathpanel ‘truth’, the rest of us have reality.

“I won’t attribute your arguments to your emotional or psychological state, because that’s precisely the kind of argument that partisans love to have. Partisans would much, much rather be explaining the world in the context of passionate, tribal support or opposition, and not policy goals.”
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Incredibly well put, epitomizing much of Shep’s recent commentary, to me and other DFHs who dare to question the logic of blind loyalty to the machine. We’re driven by our hysterical, irrational emotions while his near constant stream of vitriol against low-brow rightists here is supposedly unemotional?

shepherdwong:
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I find this part of your remarks interesting, when you said:

“After this, I don’t think Democrats ever could propose to turn Medicare over to the private insurance market in any fashion.”

, because it’s my contention that an elite faction of ideologues within the Democratic Party will try, in spite of that, and (literally) in spite of us liberal Democrats.
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Don’t you remember last year, when Joe Klein said:

“To be sure, this bill is not perfect…and, in some ways, quite awful. But it is the first step in what will undoubtedly be a continuing process to rationalize the American health care system. Medical malparactice reform will have to be addressed sooner or later. The bill unnecessarily expands Medicaid, as Karen has reported extensively, a program that really should be abolished–Medicaid recipients should receive their health care through the exchanges (as should senior citizens for that matter, but that may come in time, too).”
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http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/03/19/right-wing-nervous-breakdown/

It’s not “perfect.” It’s a “first step.”
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Medicaid recipients should receive their health care through the state-based exchanges.
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Medicare recipients should, too…in good time, when it’s the right political moment.
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It’s a “continuing process.”
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When this faction of Democrats were defeated in 1994, when they first tried to enact the PPACA, did they stop advocating for it? Did they stop trying, ever?
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Or did they wait for their opportunity, hone their messaging, work on “improving” their policy and politics, and try again as soon as they could, as hard as they could (within the parameters of their warped ideology) to get it written into law?
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Don’t you remember, shepherdwong?
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1994 (and then 1995) didn’t stop them. 15 years of an ascendant Republican Party and conservative movement couldn’t stop them. Joe Klein is an ideologue. Jon Gruber is an ideologue. The people behind the policies and the politicians are ideologues. They believe in their stuff. They believe, deeply, that they are right, and that everyone else –especially if you’re a New Deal liberal populist– is simply wrong.
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You really believe that they’re ever going to stop trying to put Medicare recipients into exchanges?
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Really?
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Why?

@12.0… I guess you have forgotten about Muslims, Mexicans, and Death Panels. Also, I think it is more straight forward to address someone face to face when you are in disagreement than for them to here it through other sources, IE the somewhat factually challenged “news” sources.

Hear not Here. My Bad.

“Incredibly well put, epitomizing much of Shep’s recent commentary, to me and other DFHs who dare to question the logic of blind loyalty to the machine.”
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The only reason my commentary puts anyone’s rationality into question is because of the constant conflating of opposition to Republicans and specific differentiation between the two parties as “blind loyalty to the machine.” No one who has read more than a word I have written about “the machine” could rationally believe such a thing, no less put it into print (especially galling from someone who has specifically discussed my presumably rational and perfectly cynical philosophy of voting for the lesser of evils in all cases). It is, literally, absurd.

“You really believe that they’re ever going to stop trying to put Medicare recipients into exchanges?”
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No, not as long as there’s a profit in it and no matter how bad it is for the national interest. That’s why I hate corporatist “conservative” Democrats at least as much as you.
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But I also don’t think that they rule the country. Even if they have far greater political power than liberals and liberal institutions, the people still get to decide. That’s why reform of the media and public knowledge about the “conservative” movement are paramount (we can get to Third-Way centrism when they get to the second grade). It is the ignorance, political vacuousness and misinformation within the public mind, particularly among centrist swing voters, that determines our policy choices, not Democrats, Third-way Democrats or President Obama. Your fire is mis-directed.

This is the kind of strong leadership and vision that should be in the White House, not the anti-American communist liar we have a present.Congratulations, Mr. Ryan. We shall overcome.

Rep. Buerkle claims that up she had not said that she would vote for the republican budget plan; claims up to the last minute that she had not yet made up her mind?

Yeah right… she voted for it…

That’s soooo republican; pretend that you aren’t going to vote for a something that unpopular then vote for it at the last minute… what a crock!!

Ryan should at least be commended for recognizing that the US has some very difficult decisions to make and offering tough options.
He would be more credible if he answered the question as to why US Health Care is more expensvie per capita that any other industrialized nation in the world. Meanwhile, infant mortality and life expectancy are among the worst.
The US needs to deal with the liability insurance maintained by doctors driving the cost of your health care thru the roof – to pay preying lawyers. Deal with the root cause of your issue