For Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, abolishing Obamacare is not enough to satisfy his radical right-wing cravings. He’s also getting ready to aim his wrecking ball at Medicare in the name of saving it, via privatization.
New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait explains:
“During the campaign, coverage of the issues was blotted out by coverage of Hillary Clinton’s emails and Donald Trump’s broad suite of sociopathic tendencies. And of the issues that did receive any attention, a conspicuously missing one was Paul Ryan’s plan to push Medicare beneficiaries into private health insurance. Reporters just assumed that, since Trump never talked about it, it won’t happen. But Paul Ryan still wants it to happen. And in a Fox News interview with Bret Baier, Ryan said Medicare privatization is on.”
Indeed. Despite the tension between Ryan and then-candidate Donald Trump, Ryan is now aglow—if not over Trump, himself, at least with the prospect of using his presidency to enact a long-dreamed-of plan to privatize Medicare. There seems to be no concern for the harm it would do to the recipients.
Not surprisingly, Fox host Baier didn’t bring up that pesky drawback. Instead he listened quietly as Ryan gushed about Trump working on making 2017 “a success for the American people.” Now, Ryan acted like a Trump bestie as he dismissed the previous ill will as, “The past is the past.”
“Let’s go now execute,” Ryan said he told Trump. “Let’s get these things done.”
Ryan didn’t have the decency to admit he’s out to destroy Medicare. Instead, he pretended he wants to save it. Even though, as Baier pointed out, “entitlement reform” is “not Donald Trump’s plan.”
But clearly, Ryan doesn’t care.
RYAN: You have to remember. When Obamacare became Obamacare, Obamacare rewrote Medicare, rewrote Medicaid. So if you’re going to repeal and replace Obamacare, you have to address those issues as well. …What people don’t realize is, because of Obamacare, Medicare is going broke … Because of Obamacare, Medicare is in fiscal straits.
That’s an out and out falsehood, Chait points out:
“In fact, it’s the complete opposite of the truth. The Medicare trust fund has been extended 11 years as a result of the passage of Obamacare, whose cost reforms have helped bring health care inflation to historic lows. It is also untrue that repealing Obamacare requires changing traditional Medicare. But Ryan clearly believes he needs to make this claim in order to sell his plan, or probably even to convince fellow Republicans to support it.”
Fox host Baier noted none of that.
As Politico reports, with a Republican House, Senate and White House, Ryan plans to use a budget tool to steamroll these changes through, meaning Democratic support is not necessary. But if there are enough Republicans who see a backlash from their constituents, it might be a different story.
Get ready to organize if you want any hope of stopping this.
Ellen Brodsky was a researcher for the documentary “Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism.” Her work appears at newshounds.us, Liberal America and Crooks and Liars. Follow her on Twitter.
