So I know a lot of people are scratching their heads over why Paul Ryan is making the GOP vote on his budget proposal when the predictable outcome was this
Now, again, I am just an outside the Beltway academic but it seems to me that if you really want to replace Medicare without a voucher system then you have to get people to vote to replace Medicare with a voucher system.
If you can’t get people to take this vote or you can’t build a congressional majority of people who would be willing to take this vote then your chances are sunk.
Moreover, time is not on the GOP side here. Not only are demographics moving in the Democrats favor but the general ethos towards universal health care is growing.
Even Tea Party folks that I talk to on the ground tie themselves in knots over this issue. They say things like: of course no one should have to go without chemotherapy because they can’t afford it, but . . .
My long point is that the moment someone says that the analysis is over. You simply must be willing to let people go without treatment or there is no real issue.
No slight of hand or rearranging pieces on the chess board is going to change the fact that if you devote real resources to medical care you will devote fewer to other things.
Further there is no close at hand innovation to make us think that people are going to stop getting sicker as they get older. Thus no matter how effective any one treatment is you are always fighting an uphill battle of increasing costs.
All of that being said, I really didn’t think the Ryan plan was going to work. However, if you did think it was going to work it makes sense to go all in. And, really to keep going all in no matter how badly you lose.
What else are you going to do? What would be the point of winning if you couldn’t accomplish this?
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Wednesday ~ May 25th, 2011 at 11:05 am
Jeff
The issue is that the Ryan plan’s chances for passing during this Congress were sunk from the start. There are clear benefits to pushing through an unpopular policy that you believe in if it has a real chance of passing. The Democrats did this last Congress and though they lost a lot of seats, they did end up getting their policy passed in the end.
The Ryan plan never had that chance. The budget had pretty much zero chance of getting 50, much less 60, votes in the Senate and even if it did somehow pass, it would have been vetoed by the President. The only real way for the plan to ever pass would be to focus on doing well in the 2012 elections and passing it then. Voting on it now is equivalent to the Democrats in the House passing some unpopular liberal measure in early 2007.
Wednesday ~ May 25th, 2011 at 11:22 am
Apex
BINGO! Strategy is lacking because political pressure demanded that the Republicans DO SOMETHING. The TEA party is a bit upset. They want something done. Telling them to bide their time was not something they wanted to hear. The voting public is frankly stupid. The average person does not understand long term strategic political policy planning. They vote their emotion and they want results NOW, even if there is no possible way to get them NOW. They don’t care. They want what they want when they want it and many of them seem to think if the politicians don’t produce it, its because they didn’t push it hard enough. They ignore the fact that this is not a dictatorship.
Wednesday ~ May 25th, 2011 at 12:17 pm
Wait to Pass RyanCare in 2012? « Modeled Behavior
[...] response to my last post a commenter says The issue is that the Ryan plan’s chances for passing during this Congress were [...]
Thursday ~ June 2nd, 2011 at 2:43 am
Jim Kainz
The “secret” $600 trillion Derivatives Market which most Americans have never heard of presents an opportunity to pay off the National Debt without cuts to Medicare benefits. A small 0.5% transfer fee when these billion dollar contracts execute would raise over a half trillion dollars yearly in addition to any other deficit reductions we take. See “How to Pay Off the National Debt” by Kainz on amazon or barnesandnoble.com.