How Paul Ryan enslaves Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom

The Republican VP nominee claims Hayek as hero. Did he miss the libertarian economist’s advocacy of universal healthcare? By Bernard Harcourt for the Guardian – Where, as in the case of sickness and accident, neither the desire to avoid such calamities nor the efforts to overcome their consequences are as a rule weakened by the…

Read More

On Medicare Vouchers and Cuts

Medicare is the main issue for both major political parties. Republicans Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney’s platform is to privatize Medicare and gut Medicaid, but Republicans are not alone in their attacks on our social safety net. Ryan developed his Medicare plan with Democratic Senator Ron Wyden last year. Ryan’s proposal (deceptively titled the “Path…

Read More

Ryan’s “premium support” proposal for Medicare: Myths and facts

By Ida Hellander, M.D. for PNHP – Background: “Premium support” or voucher proposals for Medicare are a mainstay of conservative health policy. They have been defeated for over three decades, starting with President Reagan’s FY 1981 budget proposal. They are a key feature of “managed competition” — type reform proposals. Although President Clinton embraced managed…

Read More

VP Pick Ryan’s Plan Would Be Path to the Poorhouse

By Wendell Potter for the Huffington Post – If Americans who are embracing Rep. Paul Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” — and that now includes Mitt Romney — spent a few minutes reviewing a few recent research reports, they just might conclude that the Wisconsin Republican’s plan to reduce the deficit might better be renamed the…

Read More

Ryan Budget May Lead to Single-Payer Health Care

By Ezra Klein for Bloomberg View – Let’s play a game: I’ll describe a health-care bill to you. Then you tell me if I’m describing President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act or the budget released this week by Representative Paul Ryan. The bill works like this: The federal government subsidizes Americans to participate in health…

Read More

The Ryan Medicaid Plan: A Threat to Middle Class Security

The Medicaid changes in the Ryan budget plan would have extraordinary implications not only for the poor individuals who are normally thought of as the principal beneficiaries but for a very broad swath of middle-class families who are far more likely to become reliant on Medicaid benefits at some point in their life than most…

Read More

Cut Medicare? No Way! Make It ‘Medicare for All’!

By John Nichols for the Nation – House Budget Committee chair Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, proposes to undermine the integrity of the Medicare and Medicaid programs, with an eye toward enriching the insurance companies that so generously fund his campaigns. The American people are not amused. They have sent a clear signal that they want to…

Read More

89 Arrested Protesting Paul Ryan’s Medicaid Cuts

By David Nather for Politico – Capitol Police arrested 89 disability rights protesters late Monday for occupying the rotunda of the Cannon House Office Building in a demonstration against Rep. Paul Ryan’s Medicaid plan, which they said would force people with disabilities to live in nursing homes rather than in their own homes. The protesters…

Read More

What we’re not being told about Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan

The mainstream media has failed to report that the Ryan plan is a privatization program that will hand $30tn to insurers By Dean Baker for the Guardian – The film Casablanca features one of greatest moments in movie history. With Humphrey Bogart standing with a smoking pistol over the body of the dead Gestapo major,…

Read More