Public loses with Ryan’s plans

By Thomas Bird, Wellington, Nevada

Saturday, Feb. 11, 2017 | 2 a.m.

House Speaker Paul Ryan is at work to cut Social Security and Medicare.

His Social Security plan is to increase the retirement age by two years, reduce the paltry formula that calculates cost-of-living adjustments and reduce the level of payments for those with other sources of earnings, i.e. IRA income. No increases in revenue, only cuts in benefits.

Ryan and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price intend to do away with traditional Medicare and replace it with a voucher program. Beneficiaries will receive “premium support” (a voucher). We would then take a voucher to private insurance companies and attempt to exchange it for a health insurance policy. There is no guarantee the insurance companies will accept these vouchers or that the voucher value will keep up with the increasing cost of a policy. This is a payoff to the big insurance companies and to Big Pharma, which contribute heavily to campaigns.

Medicare’s administrative costs are at 3 percent. For private, for-profit health care insurance companies, those costs run 18-20 percent. Switching from traditional Medicare to private insurance results in a double-digit cost increase to the public and more money in the pockets of insurance company executives.

The writer is president of the Nevada Alliance for Retired Americans.