Congressman Ryan wants to do for Medicare what W failed to do, PRIVATIZE it

Congressman Paul Ryan, the ranking Republican member of the House Budget Committee, has put forth a budget plan that seeks to privatize Medicare which is the most efficient provider of medical insurance coverage in the country. Medicare spends 98% of its budget on health care while the typical private insurance company spends less than 80% of its budget on health care. Ryan’s plan would offer tax credits and vouchers with the amount indexed for inflation. Some would say that it sounds pretty good even though coverage under private insurance would cost substantially more than comparable coverage under Medicare due to the significantly lower efficiency of private insurance.

So let’s say that Congressman Ryan’s bill was accepted as the law of the land, last year inflation was so low that Social Security didn’t even increase payments under what is known as Cost of Living Adjustments, so we would expect that there would be no increase in the tax credits or vouchers. But what would stop insurance companies from raising rates just like Anthem Blue Cross just announced. In California they are hiking insurance rates as much as an astounding 39% and where in the past they’ve only raised rates once a year, they’ve warned that future rate hikes could come at any time.

So the Republican plan for health care reform consists of giving away tax dollars to private companies who can still charge Americans as much as they want and jack up rates as often as they want.

Where's the concern for the 123 people who died today due to lack of medical insurance?

In a study released by Harvard Medical School September 18, 2009 researchers found that 45,000 people die in the United States each year in large part because they lack health insurance and can not get good care.

If terrorists managed to pull off a September 11 scale attack every month for a year they wouldn’t kill as many people as lack of medical insurance does in that same year. Why are we as a nation willing to go to war and spend what is now projected to be $2-3 trillion over 3,000 deaths but not willing to do what’s necessary to make sure every American receives adequate health care. More than 3,000 of our soldiers’ have given their lives not to mention thousands more accepting devastating injuries in a ill conceived effort to prevent 3,000 more deaths by terrorists but John Cornyn wouldn’t even support the watered down version of health care reform legislation proposed by the Senate Finance Committee. Tens of thousands of civilian lives in Iraq and Afghanistan have been sacrificed over those terrorist caused deaths and yet we’re willing to let 15 times as many Americans die every year so some insurance company can turn a profit?

I don’t hear a lot of concern for the 123 people who died today or the 123 more who will die every tomorrow until we have universal coverage, because they lacked medical insurance. What is wrong with this picture?