by Patrick Appel
Jonathan Cohn reiterates the Democratic party's case against Ryan's Medicare plan:
Ryan really believes in ending Medicare as we know it. The essential promise of Medicare, ever since its establishment in 1965, is that every senior citizen is entitled to a comprehensive set of medical benefits that will protect him or her from financial ruin. The government provides these benefits directly, through a public insurance program, although seniors have the right to enroll in comparable private plans if they choose. But the key is that guarantee of benefits, and it’s what Ryan would take away. He would replace it with a voucher, whose value would rise at a pre-determined formula unlikely to keep up with actual medical expenses.
Avik Roy, on the other hand, believes that the "Democrats' 'Mediscare' attack won't work against Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney." He claims that the Wyden-Ryan Medicare plan "only applies to Americans younger than 55 years of age, and gives those younger individuals the option of remaining in the traditional Medicare program, or choosing a comparable private-sector insurance plan":
The bottom line: if Romney and Ryan leave you the option to remain in the 1965-vintage, fee-for-service, traditional Medicare program, and you claim that Medicare has “ended as we know it,” what you’ve really ended is the English language as we know it.
Kornacki is skeptical that Ryan and Romney can successfully make this argument:
The Democratic strategy to win back the House this year involves pinning the Ryan budget to every Republican candidate, and Obama has been itching to make the fall race a competition between his priorities and those of Ryan’s plan. The hope for the Romney campaign is that they’ll be able to turn the tables on their opponents by presenting the GOP ticket as a team of unusually serious and courageous policy leaders who are willing to tell hard truths about the country’s fiscal predicament.
There are endless reasons to doubt this will work.
The Dish 