Why Is CNN Pushing Factually Wrong Picture of Paul Ryan Medicare Plan

Why Is CNN Pushing Factually Wrong Picture of Paul Ryan Medicare Plan

CNN's Sanjay Gupta claimed that the proposed changes to Medicare that Congressman Paul Ryan has offered would allow seniors to choose between "a voucher" system and "traditional Medicare," while keeping the system affordable. In fact, experts say the Ryan plan would threaten Medicare's long-term viability and potentially would increase seniors' medical costs by thousands of dollars.

CNN's Gupta: Ryan Plan Will Give Future Seniors Option To Retain "Traditional Medicare"

Sanjay Gupta Claimed Ryan's Proposal Will Give Future Seniors A Choice Between Voucher System And Traditional Medicare. On the September 28 edition of CNN's Early Start, CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta reported on the differences between the Ryan Medicare plan and the Affordable Care Act and claimed that the Ryan plan would offer those under 55 "the option of getting a voucher to purchase private insurance, or they could stick with traditional Medicare":

    GUPTA: Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan proposed to cap malpractice insurance, cut Medicaid by $810 billion dollars over the next 10 years, give states more control over their Medicaid funds, overhaul Medicare. The overhaul? People now younger than 55, when they reach retirement, would have the option of getting a voucher to purchase private insurance. Or, they could stick with traditional Medicare. [CNN, Early Start, 9/28/12]

But Experts Say Ryan's Plan Threatens Medicare's Long-Term Viability

CBPP: Ryan's Promise To Ensure "Traditional Medicare Remains An Option" Cannot Be Kept. Paul Van de Water, an economist and senior fellow at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, wrote in March that Congressman Paul Ryan's plans for Medicare in his latest budget could lead to the unraveling of traditional Medicare:

    Chairman Ryan claims that his proposal "ensur[es] that traditional Medicare remains an option." Unfortunately, that's not the case. Under premium support, traditional Medicare would tend to attract a less healthy pool of enrollees, while private plans would attract healthier enrollees (as occurs today with Medicare and private Medicare Advantage plans). Although the proposal calls for "risk adjusting" payments to health plans -- that is, adjusting them to reflect the average health status of their enrollees -- the risk adjustment process is highly imperfect and captures only part of the differences in costs across plans that stem from differences in the health of enrollees.

    Inadequate risk adjustment would mean that traditional Medicare would be only partially compensated for its higher-cost enrollees, which would force Medicare to raise beneficiary premiums to make up the difference. The higher premiums would lead more of Medicare's healthier enrollees to abandon it for private plans, very possibly setting off a spiral of rising premium costs and falling enrollment for traditional Medicare. Over time, traditional Medicare would become less financially viable and could unravel -- not because it was less efficient than the private plans, but because it was competing on an unlevel playing field in which private plans captured the healthier beneficiaries and incurred lower costs as a result. Ryan also would allow private plans to tailor their benefit packages to attract healthier beneficiaries and deter sicker ones, which only makes this outcome more likely. [Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 3/28/12]

CBPP: Voucher Systems That Include Medicare Option Could "Threaten Traditional Medicare's Long-Term Viability." In a September 2011 report titled, "Converting Medicare to Premium Support Would Likely Lead to Two-Tier Health Care System," CBPP explained that under a "premium support" system such as the one in the Ryan plan that was passed by the House in April 2011, "inadequate risk adjustment" could lead to healthier seniors abandoning traditional Medicare for private plans. The report explained that could leave only the less healthy in the traditional Medicare program, which could "drive up its costs and threaten traditional Medicare's long-term viability." [Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 9/26/11]

Brookings Institute: Financing For Ryan Plan Would "Throw Into Doubt The Very Survival Of The Program." Brookings Institute senior fellow Henry Aaron evaluated the Ryan Medicare plan and concluded that "the financing for traditional Medicare would become progressively less adequate, throwing into doubt the very survival of the program":

Liberal media. The only people who think the media is liberal are the same people who dance with ghosts and think the Loch Ness monster talks to them in the shower - oh, and Republicans.

NBC’s David Gregory is a hack. he is of that right-of-center no real news school of journalism. Democrats says world id round, Republicans disagree. Though he has moved on to just making crap up like his conservative brethren - NBC’s David Gregory Misquotes Obama, Falsely Claims President Said ‘Al Qaeda Has Been Defeated’

Mitt Romney: Free Speech Is for Billionaires, Not School-Teachers

What Does Mitt Romney Believe In? Obviously Not American Values, But Whatever Lie Will Make Him President

What Does Mitt Romney Believe In? Obviously Not American Values, But Whatever Lie Will Make Him President

I’ve been struck by the baldness of Romney’s repetitive lies about Obama — that Obama ended the work requirement under welfare, for example, or that Obama’s Affordable Care Act cuts $716 billion from Medicare benefits.

The mainstream media along with a half-dozen independent fact-checking organizations and sites have called Romney on these whoppers, but to no avail. He keeps making these assertions.

Every campaign is guilty of exaggerations, embellishments, distortions, and half-truths. But this is another thing altogether. I’ve been directly involved in seven presidential campaigns, and I don’t recall a presidential candidate lying with such audacity, over and over again. Why does he do it, and how can he get away with it?

The obvious answer is such lies are effective. Polls show voters are starting to believe them, especially in swing states where they’re being repeated constantly in media spots financed by Romney’s super PAC or ancillary PACs and so-called “social welfare” organizations (political fronts disguised as charities, such as Karl Rove and the Koch brothers have set up).

Romney’s lying machine is extraordinarily well financed. By August, according to Jane Mayer in her recent New Yorker article, at least 33 billionaires had each donated a quarter of a million dollars or more to groups aiming to defeat Obama – with most of it flooding into attack ads in swing states.

In early August, “Americans for Prosperity,” one of the nonprofit front groups masquerading as a charity, and founded in part by billionaire right-wingers Charles and David Koch, bought some $27 million in ad time on spots now airing in eleven swing states.

So Romney’s lying machine is working.

But what does all this tell us about the man who is running this lying machine? (Or if Romney’s not running it, what does it tell us about a man who would select the people who are?)

We knew he was a cypher — that he’ll say and do whatever is expedient, change positions like a chameleon, eschew any core principles.

Yet resorting to outright lies — and organizing a presidential campaign around a series of lies — reveals a whole new level of cynicism, a profound disdain for what remains of civility in public life, and a disrespect of the democratic process.

The question is whether someone who is willing to resort to such calculated lies, and build a campaign machine around them, can be worthy of the public’s trust with the most powerful office in the world.

For decades conservative have claimed they are the party of values. America - some of us were - should have asked what kind of values. Romney and Paul Ryan seem to have nothing but contempt for anything resembling an honest campaign. No matter how many times the lies in Romney ads are shown to be mendacious lies, he and his billionaire buddies running pro Romney PACS, just repeat the lies over and over. So a Romney presidency would be based on a foundation of moral corruption from day one.

Who Built That? Fox Hypes Romney Op-Ed That Touts Businesses Receiving Government Money

Conservatives are trying to sell Americans the bizarre notion that we're moving towards socialism. Anyone who has studied poiltical science and economics can tell you that this is not what socialism looks like,

Corporate Profits Rebound But Household Income Falls In Wake Of Great Recession

Romney's Unethical MediScare: No, “ObamaCare” Doesn't Cut Medicare, It Strengthens Benefits And Cuts Costs

Romney's Unethical MediScare: No, “ObamaCare” Doesn't Cut Medicare, It Strengthens Benefits And Cuts Costs

I’m sorry, but do Republican politicians have no shame? They’ve been running with the bold faced lie that “ObamaCare”, aka the Affordable Care Act, “cuts Medicare” since the day it was signed into law. Jesse Kelly pasted signs that “Gabby voted to cut $500 Billion Medicare” on his campaign signs in 2010. What do you do when a lie doesn’t stick? Tell a bigger lie. Now that Mitt Romney has selected Paul Ryan as his running mate Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” Budget Plan that converts Medicare into a voucher system that will result in much high medical cost for future retires has become a campaign issue. So Romney figures the best defense is a good offense and has dusted off the old “Obamacare cuts Medicare” lie and upped the ante – now he claims the Affordable Care Act “cuts Medicare” by an absurd $700 Billion.

Whatever amount you want to use, the Affordable Care Act doesn’t “cut Medicare” – it saves Medicare by reducing expenses. Let SeniorCorps.org explain:

    Despite the doom and gloom tactics of some members of congress and talking heads, the cuts will come from two prime sources; (1) eliminating Medicare fraud, and (2) a reduction in the amount of payments that are paid into Medicare Advantage programs that are offered by private insurance companies.

Medicare fraud cost the program an estimated $60 Billion every year. By beefing up the enforcement of fraud detection, the Affordable Care Act enables the Medicare Administration to significantly reduce this waste. As for Medicare Advantage program, that was a program passed by a Republican Congress under the theory that private business can always do something better than government. Enron anyone? Medicare Advantage benefits typically cost much more than benefits directly from Medicare. As my blogging colleague Denise in her Medicare and More blog explains so well in her Paul Ryan’s Medicare Plan article today, Medicare administrative costs average 3-4%, while private insurance companies’ administrative costs average around 15%. One reason is that the Medicare Administration doesn’t pay hundreds of millions in salaries & benefits to CEOs like the big insurance companies do. And private insurance companies don’t like to lose money, so they got the Republicans to include a “risk adjustment” factor into the Medicare Advantage program that guarantees the insurance companies will always get paid more than their actual cost. It doesn’t matter if their higher costs are from bloated administrative costs or actual benefits paid out to enrollees, they always get paid more. The Affordable Care Act remedies that by reducing and capping payments to insurance companies offering Medicare Advantage policies. The leaner, more efficient companies will do just fine and continue to offer policies, while the companies with bloated costs will abandon the market. Capitalism at its finest. And seniors don’t lose a single benefit – if they don’t fine find a Medicare Advantage policy that meets their needs they simply re-enroll to get those benefits directly from Medicare.

Another big “cuts Medicare” lie about the Affordable Care Act is that it makes drastic cuts in payments to doctors, hospitals and other healthcare providers. Nope, that’s a law passed by the Republican Congress and signed by President Clinton in 1997. It went into effect in 2002, but so far Congress has constantly voted to defer those payment reductions. If there are any reductions in payments to healthcare providers, it will be from an Act of Congress, not the Affordable Care Act.

No, the Affordable Care Act (“ObamaCare”, if you must) doesn’t cut Medicare – it saves Medicare expenses by eliminating fraud and billions in payments to inefficient insurance companies. But “RyanCare” clearly does – it raises the age for eligibility to age 67, and converts Medicare to a government subsidy to private insurance companies. And if the fixed voucher payments to insurance companies doesn’t cover the cost of private insurance, future retirees will be faced with making up the difference out of their own pocket, or do without.

UPDATE: Thanks to a link in a comment from my fellow Tucson Citizen blogger Fort Buckley, I’m updating my blog with some excellent information from a blog at the WashingtonPost.com by Sarah Kliff:

    On July 24, the Congressional Budget Office sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, detailing the budget impact of repealing the Affordable Care Act. If Congress overturned the law, “spending for Medicare would increase by an estimated $716 billion over that 2013–2022 period.” As to how the Affordable Care Act actually gets to $716 billion in Medicare savings, that’s a bit more complicated. The majority of the cuts, as you can see in this chart below, come from reductions in how much Medicare reimburses hospitals and private health insurance companies.

I can’t include the chart in my blog as it’s copyrighted material. You can see it at the link to Sarah Kliff’s article, or I’ll explain it: It’ s pie chart showing that 34.8% of the $716 Billion in Medicare savings over the next 10 years comes from reduced reimbursements to hospitals. The hospital companies agreed to it as they expect to have many more paying customers (as opposed to the uninsured) from the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of medical insurance coverage. About 30.2% of savings comes from reduced payments to insurance companies in the Medicare Advantage program. Ms. Kliff explains how that works:

    Medicare Advantage plans allows seniors to join a private health insurance, with the federal government footing the bill. The whole idea of Medicare Advantage was to drive down the cost of health insurance for the elderly as private insurance companies competing for seniors’ business.

    That’s not what happened. By 2010, the average Medicare Advantage per-patient cost was 117 percent of regular fee-for-service. The Affordable Care Act gives those private plans a haircut and tethers reimbursement levels to the quality of care administered, and patient satisfaction.

Reducing the government subsidy to insurance companies to provide benefits that cost more than if Medicare itself provided them, and ties reimbursement rates to the quality of care provided and patient satisfaction. Sounds like a darn good thing to me. Finally, around 35% of Medicare savings come from a number of small changes. Reductions to Medicare’s Disproportionate Share Payments — extra funds made to hospitals for services made to  uninsured patients. Lower payments to home health providers make up another 8.8 percent. About a dozen cuts like this make up the 35% in savings. Ms. Kliff concludes with this point:

    It’s worth noting that there’s one area these cuts don’t touch: Medicare benefits. The Affordable Care Act rolls back payment rates for hospitals and insurers. It does not, however, change the basket of benefits that patients have access to. And, as Ezra pointed out earlier today, the Ryan budget would keep these cuts in place.

The bold emphasis is mine. The Affordable Care Act, “ObamaCare” if you must, doesn’t cut back on any benefits for Medicare. It saves over $716 Billion in Medicare expenses over the next 10 years. Repealing it – which Mitt Romney and pretty much anyone with an “R” after their name has vowed to do – would add over $716 Billion to the deficit.

Gail Wilensky, a former administrator of the Medicare program under George H. W. Bush, made clear in a June 28 Bloomberg article, "there are no reductions in the Medicare benefits promised in the law." In a June 28 post FactCheck.org similarly concluded that the ACA "stipulates that guaranteed Medicare benefits won't be reduced."

Why are conservative Republicans lying so loud and so often about how they are the ones who would gut Medicare, because they know that seniors vote and they don not want anyone to touch a very sucessful program started by liberals back in the 1960s.

FACT CHECK: Obama, Ryan, Romney Backed Medicare Cuts. The word cuts is confusing. In this context it means they cut waste and introduced cost saving measures like hospitals meeting certain efficiencies, instead of piling on costs.

In one of Romney's ads he says he will restore that mythical $700 billion to Medicare. In other words he would take away the cost savings. He cannot do that as president. He would need both houses of Congress to vote to repeal those cost savings and to repeal all of Obamacare. That is not going to happen. If elected Romney will be President, not Emperor.

Morally Corrupt Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan Spread $500 Billion Medicare Lie

Morally Corrupt Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan Spread $500 Billion Medicare Lie

Just one day after President Obama declared that the Republican budget proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) would “ultimately end Medicare as we know it,” his likely Republican opponent appeared at the Newspaper Association of America and threw the accusation right back at him. Obama, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said, “has taken a series of steps that end Medicare as we know it” and “is the only President to ever cut $500 billion from Medicare”:

    ROMNEY: I’d be willing to consider the President’s plan, but he doesn’t have one. That’s right: In over three years, he has failed to enact or even propose a serious plan to solve our entitlement crisis.

    Instead, he has taken a series of steps that end Medicare as we know it. He is the only President to ever cut $500 billion from Medicare. And, as a result, more than half of doctors say they will cut back on treating seniors. He is destroying the Medicare Advantage program, eliminating the coverage that millions of seniors depend on and reducing choice by two-thirds.

    To control Medicare cost, he has created an unelected, unaccountable panel with the power to prevent Medicare from providing certain treatments. The result will be fewer treatments and services available to patients in need, and nowhere else to turn.


Romney rarely lets the facts get in the way of his rhetoric, but these oft-repeated accusations ring particularly hallow — and are hardly rare. The savings achieved in Medicare through the Affordable Care Act will help stabilize Medicare by eliminating overpayments to private insurers and slowly phasing in payment adjustments that encourage greater efficiency. As a result, the law extends the life of the Medicare trust fund by eight years and allows seniors to retain all of their guaranteed Medicare benefits. Medicare beneficiaries are already paying less for prescription drug coverage and receiving preventive care as a result of the law, while enrollment in Medicare Advantage has increased and premiums have fallen. The law, in other words, does exactly the opposite of Romney’s claim: it expands Medicare “as we know it.”

That doesn’t mean that it solves all of our health care cost problems. It doesn’t and Obama has proposed accelerating some of the law’s cost-control mechanisms to further lower the growth of spending. But Romney has labeled such efforts “rationing” and is offering an alternative “premium support” scheme that transforms senior’s guaranteed Medicare benefit into a voucher and significantly reduces the government’s contribution to the program. As a result, seniors will likely pay more for their health care, while the market clout and purchasing power of traditional Medicare — which has led on delivery reform and efficiencies — will shrink. So if the question is, which candidate ends Medicare for seniors, it’s hard to see how Romney’s plan to push future retirees into private insurance doesn’t fit the bill.

Are Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan men or gutter scum. Its hard to tell by how they display their values. Romney has recently said he is running on his Medicare plan and not Ryan's. Guess what, an analysis of the Romney plan shows that he would give seniors the shaft as well, Romney Budget Proposals Would Require Massive Cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and Other Programs

Will Media Find Their Way to Discover Just How Radical Paul Ryan Is?

By contrast, Representative Ryan has an extreme right-wing agenda that predates both the Great Society and the New Deal. He has put forward plans that would cut and privatize both Social Security and Medicare. He has also called for essentially zeroing out most categories of federal spending.

While Ryan supports current levels of military spending, the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) analysis of his budget shows that there will be essentially nothing left for anything else by 2040. The CBO analysis of the Ryan budget (prepared under his direction) shows that spending on all items other than health care and Social Security would fall to 4.75 percent of GDP by 2040 and to 3.75 percent of GDP by 2050.

The military budget currently is more than 4.0 percent of GDP. In the post-World War II era it has never been less than 3.0 percent. This means that Ryan's budget would leave nothing for running the State Department, the Park Service, the Food and Drug Administration, the Justice Department, the National Institutes of Health and the other areas that comprise the federal government as it now exists.

The government plays a major role in financing drug and medical research. Ryan, true to his dog eat dog roots would rather people die than benefit from the positive role government can play is an advanced economy.

Why Does Mitt Romney Hate Retired Americans and the Disabled

What Does Mitt Romney Hate Retired Americans and the Disabled

Mitt Romney’s proposals to cap total federal spending, boost defense spending, cut taxes, and balance the budget would require extraordinarily large cuts in other programs, both entitlements and discretionary programs, according to our revised analysis based on new information and updated projections.

For the most part, Governor Romney has not outlined cuts in specific programs. But if policymakers exempted Social Security from the cuts, as Romney has suggested, and cut Medicare, Medicaid, and all other entitlement and discretionary programs by the same percentage — to meet Romney’s spending cap, defense spending target, and balanced budget requirement — then non-defense programs other than Social Security would have to be cut 29 percent in 2016 and 59 percent in 2022 (see Figure 1). Without the balanced budget requirement, the cuts would be smaller but still massive, reaching 40 percent in 2022.

The cuts that would be required under the Romney budget proposals in programs such as veterans’ disability compensation, Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for poor elderly and disabled individuals, SNAP (formerly food stamps), and child nutrition programs would move millions of households below the poverty line or drive them deeper into poverty. The cuts in Medicare and Medicaid would make health insurance unaffordable (or unavailable) to tens of millions of people. The cuts in non-defense discretionary programs — a spending category that covers a wide variety of public services such as elementary and secondary education, law enforcement, veterans’ health care, environmental protection, and biomedical research — would come on top of the deep cuts in this part of the budget that are already in law due to the discretionary funding caps established in last year’s Budget Control Act (BCA).
Box 1: The Romney Tax Cuts and Our Estimates

Governor Romney has said he would offset an unspecified portion of his proposed tax cuts by reducing tax exemptions, deductions, and other preferences known as “tax expenditures.” Because of Romney’s spending cap (which covers interest payments along with other spending) and his balanced budget requirement, the depth of his required budget cuts depends on the degree to which the cost of his tax cuts would be offset through reductions in tax expenditures. In this analysis, we assume that Governor Romney would offset half of his proposed tax cuts, though we also provide estimates under alternate assumptions. This is a generous assumption: estimates from the Urban Institute-Brookings Tax Policy Center indicate that the Romney tax cuts would cost about $4.9 trillion over ten years. Securing tax-expenditure savings equal to half that amount — about $2.4 trillion — would be extremely difficult, especially since Governor Romney has said he would not increase the low tax rate on capital gains and dividend income and would not cut heavily into tax expenditures for the middle class. Analysts at the Congressional Research Service recently concluded that securing savings of more than $100 or $150 billion a year from tax expenditures is likely to be difficult to achieve.

As explained below, our estimates of the depth of spending cuts that the Romney proposals would require are broadly consistent with what Governor Romney himself has said about the magnitude of his spending reductions. These updated estimates are based on new information and proposals from the governor, updated budget and economic projections from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), modifications in our own assumptions about “current policy” to match those that CBO and other budget analysts use, and other relevant factors.

Governor Romney’s cuts would be substantially deeper than those required under the austere House-passed budget plan authored by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI). Over the 2014-2022 period, Romney would require cuts in programs other than Social Security and defense of $7 trillion to $10 trillion, compared with a little over $5 trillion under the Ryan budget. By 2022, Romney’s cuts would shrink non-defense discretionary spending — which, over the past 50 years, has averaged 3.9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and has not fallen below 3.2 percent — to between 1.1 percent and 1.6 percent of GDP.
The Romney Budget Proposals

During his campaign, Governor Romney has made four proposals that would significantly affect the overall level of federal spending, taxes, and the deficit:

    Cap total spending:  "Reduce federal spending to 20 percent of GDP by the end of my first term" and "cap it at that level."[1]
    Increase defense spending:  "Set a core defense spending floor of 4 percent of GDP."[2]   "Core defense spending," as Governor Romney defines it, encompasses 93 percent of the national defense budget function.
    Cut taxes:  Continue current tax policy by permanently extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts and other tax cuts that are scheduled to expire, further reduce income tax rates by another 20 percent (the top tax rate thus would be 28 percent), eliminate the estate tax, eliminate the taxation of investment tax for people other than those with high incomes, reduce the corporate income tax, and repeal the taxes enacted in the 2010 health reform legislation.[3] 
    Balance the budget:  "I am planning on getting a balanced budget."[4]

This paper examines the combined effect of these four proposals, since they interact, to determine the amount of spending that would be available for programs other than core defense.

because it has been generally such a well run program Medicare costs have risen much slower and lower than private insurance costs. Mitt Romney's plans would accelerate medicare costs to exceed those of private insurance - imagine seniors having to pay 29% to 59% more out of their pocket.

Time for the Department of Justice to Investigate Criminal and Currently Gov of Florida Rick Scott For Purging Eligible Voters From Florida’s Rolls

Mitt Romney Embraces the flip-flop to pander to extreme conservative voters, Romney Campaign Attacks Stimulus Mitt Once Supported

2012, Another Year and Another Conservative Republican Attempt to Destroy Medicare

2012, Another Year and Another Conservative Republican Attempt to Destroy Medicare

Are Republicans ready to be trusted with the reins of power?

If you’re thinking of answering this in the affirmative, you might want to pause long enough to learn what transpired on the third floor of the Capitol on Thursday. There, four prominent Republican lawmakers announced their proposal to abolish Medicare — “sunset” was their pseudo-verb — even for those currently on the program or nearing retirement.

In Medicare’s place would be a private plan that would raise the eligibility age and shift trillions of dollars worth of health-care coverage from the government to the elderly. “This will be the new Medicare,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the proposal’s author, announced.

For years, Republicans have insisted that they would not end Medicare as we know it and that any changes to the program would not affect those in or near retirement. In the span of 20 minutes Thursday, they jettisoned both promises.

“The president and Harry Reid have been licking their chops for over three years now waiting for Republicans to actually try to deal with the large problems like Medicare,” Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) told reporters. “So, this is the moment they’ve been waiting for.”

He’s right about that. Don’t expect Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Mitch McConnell or John Boehner to take up the cry; the party leadership isn’t about to line up for abolishing the popular entitlement program. The real question is whether party leaders would be able to repel this conservative movement to end Medicare if Republicans gain control of the White House and Congress, where conservatives already dominate the GOP caucuses.

The end-Medicare sponsors are key figures: DeMint is the godfather of the Tea Party, and he was joined by Paul and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), two conservative rising stars. Completing the foursome was Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), an influential thinker. Two other Republican senators, Richard Burr of North Carolina and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, have introduced a somewhat related plan to deal with Medicare, and Rep. Paul Ryan’s House Republican budget would also privatize Medicare, though on a slower timetable.

But DeMint and his colleagues think the time to end Medicare is now — with a cold-turkey conversion to a private program, effective in 2014. “I think if Americans actually find out the truth about what we’re doing, it will be a very big positive for Republicans in the fall,” DeMint forecast.

All the details aren’t out, but Paul says his plan would cut funding of Medicare by $1?trillion over 10 years and reduce Medicare’s liabilities by $16 trillion. It would do that by enrolling Medicare recipients in the health plan now used by federal workers. The government would pay 75 percent of the insurance premium on average but 30 percent or less for those who earned more than $100,000 a year. The eligibility age would gradually be raised to 70 from 65. If seniors can’t afford their share of the premium, they can apply for Medicaid, the health program for the poor.

Paul claimed his idea came from the Democrats’ 2004 presidential platform. But John Kerry wanted to extend the federal employee health plan to the general population, not to Medicare recipients. The 2004 platform vowed to “oppose privatizing Medicare.”

The CBPP has already run the numbers so this plan - a recycled version of Anti-American Paul Ryan (R-WI) plan and it would mean economic and health devastation to millions of Americans. So conservatives seem to hate America, seniors, the military and the disabled. What's  next apple pie and puppies.