So, you want to privatize Medicare. Do the math first.

Currently, Medicare provides health coverage for 46 million seniors and people with disabilities. These people, generally considered high-risk by insurance companies, are out of the private insurance risk pools that determine what those of us who are not seniors, nor disabled, pay in premiums. So, we have two systems in this counry, public for seniors and the disabled, and private for everyone else.

The public system isn't free and isn't charity. It's paid for through payroll taxes and eligibility depends on the person's own work history or the work history of someone on which they were dependent such as a parent or spouse.

The House Republican 2012 budget changes Medicare. First, it increases the eligibility age to 67. Then, it replaces the public coverage with vouchers for payments to the private system. It puts seniors and the disabled, two high-risk groups, back into the private system. The House GOP plan also brings back the Medicare Part D donut hole. That will increase the price of prescriptions for those in Medicare Part D plans. The changes will reduce access to coverage and cost everyone a lot more money.

Details of the Republican Medicare Plan

• Starting in 2002, seniors and people with disabilities born after 1956 would not be eligible for traditional Medicare;
• the initial voucher amount will be $8,000 for an average 65 year old in 2022, but will depend on health status;
• the voucher amount will increase with the Consumer Price Index (while health care cost rise exponentially greater than CPI);

Families USA calculates, using figures from the Congressional Budget Office, Long-Term Analysis of a Budget Proposal by Chairman Ryan, April 5, 2011, that the average 65 year old in 2022 will pay about $5750 more for coverage under the voucher plan. With the reinstatement of the donut hole, you can add in an extra $3600 for some people and is expected to double rather quickly. 

Since insurance companies won't be required to cover the same things Medicare already covers, there will be less coverage for the money and more out-of-pocket costs for seniors and the disabled. This all assumes insurance companies would be willing to cover seniors to any serious degree and the bill doesn't require them to.

This is all not to mention that bringing seniors and the disabled back into the private insurance pool will increase costs to insurance companies that they will pass on to all of their customers. Everyone will pay more and if you are not yet a senior and not disabled, you will get no voucher to help you pay for the increase.

This is an expensive bad bargain for seniors, the disabled and everyone else. Both government and the individual will pay more and it amounts to more corporate welfare to the health care industry. Republican House members, including IL-10 Bob Dold, didn't vote for this because it was good government or good business. They voted for this thing to prove an ideological point that government should be taken out of every aspect of our lives, except our sex lives and womens' health, of course.

This is Ayn Rand extremist libertarianism at it's worst. Is your grandma able to pony up an additional six to nine grand every year to help Bob Dold and Paul Ryan prove a point made by a dead mediocre fiction writer who happily took her own Medicare coverage when she reached 65?