Ryan/Romney on Medicare- More Profiteering on the Sick and Elderly

Democrats enact cuts to a social program and the Republicans are complaining about it? That's backwards. Let's think about why Republicans are opposed to Medicare cuts and why they want to implement vouchers to the states. 

First of all, it is absurd to think that converting Medicare to a voucher system and having the states provide private for-profit insurance programs for the elderly will provide better healthcare. All private for-profit insurance programs are more expensive than Medicare. The cost of administration, the high salaries of the insurance corporations, the advertising and most significant of all, the profit motive, all make private for-profit insurance plans more expensive than Medicare.  

The only way private for-profit insurance companies can reduce the cost of healthcare is by reducing healthcare. That's what they do. They deny services. They drop sick people from their policies. They refuse to insure people with pre-existing conditions. They are the gate-keeper between you and your doctor. They do everything they can to minimize services and maximize their profit. 

Yes, private for-profit insurance companies can save money and reduce cost, but the victims of reduced cost are the patients, you and me. How else can a for-profit healthcare insurer, with a 20 to 30% higher overhead  produce a lower cost? They can't. 

The elements of Medicare that the Affordable Care Act is phasing out is not traditional Medicare (Plans A and B). It's the Federal taxpayer subsidies to private healthcare insurers for Medicare Advantage (Plan C) that are being eliminated. The private for-profit insurance companies can not compete with Medicare without these subsidies. This was a Bush era GOP plan designed to privatize Medicare and begin to "wean" the seniors off traditional Medicare by making private for-profit insurers "appear" to be more efficient. But they are not, and they should be eliminated.  

Ask yourself why Republicans are complaining about Medicare cost reductions? Doesn't that smell fishy? Isn't it ideologically backwards that Democrats proposed cost cuts to a social program and Republicans are complaining about it? It's because the subsidies to their big health insurance corporations are being cut, and the political payola they receive from these fat cats demands that they fight back.That's why Republicans are acting all pious and critical about the cuts.

And some states (all in the south) would take the vouchers and buy dump trucks with the money. They'd exercise their 10th Amendment states right to do nothing, or worse, implement a program that takes care of the rich and ignores the poor (immigrants and African-Americans), as they do today with education.

The healthcare system will continue to be broken until we adopt Medicare for everyone and eliminate all private for-profit health insurance companies.  The very notion of profiteering on the sick and the elderly is obscene, unethical and shameful.