Paul Krugman:Peacockery

[cal04]

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/peacockery/?src=twt&twt=NytimesKrugman

Greg Ip is too kind in this article, in which he questions why Paul Ryan should have received an award for fiscal responsibility. Ip makes it out as if Ryan is a former good guy who has fallen astray; but there was never any reason to take his claims of being a deficit hawk seriously.

In particular, why would anyone consider a plan to replace Medicare fee-for-service with vouchers an effective way to curb future expenses? We’ve already done that: it’s called Medicare Advantage. And it has been a fiscal disaster: instead of unleashing the magic of the marketplace to reduce costs, it has ended up being a serious drain on the budget. (Undoing that drain is one of the main cost-savings features of health reform).

Now, Ryan created apparent savings by coupling a plan for vouchers with an arbitrary limit on the size of these vouchers. Hey, I can write down a plan like that, too. But what happens when it turns out that the vouchers aren’t enough to buy adequate insurance?


Paul Ryan, deficit hawk or dove?
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/01/paul_ryan_and_american_fiscal_policy

[OHdem10]

1. They will not provide a voucher sufficiently large to buy adequate

insurance.

This is probably the most expensive way in the world
to pretend to provide HC

[The Second Stone]

2. Republicans want to suck at the government teat

and have vouchers so that they can get tax dollars for themselves, not for people needing health care. They want to be a middle man and take a cut.