Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan argued that President Obama’s health care law “will lead to denied care for current seniors” and result in the collapse of Medicare due to rising costs.
The Republican ticket has a plan to save Medicare from insolvency, unlike Obama, Ryan said. “We’re the ones who are not raiding Medicare to pay for Obamacare,” he told Fox News’ Brit Hume on Tuesday. “We’re the ones who are repealing President Obama’s 15-person bureaucratic board that will put price controls on Medicare that will lead to denied care for current seniors.”
Ryan was referring to the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which was the basis of Sarah Palin’s “death panels” argument during the health care debate, though Ryan uses more precision.
“IPAB is a board with the power to make recommendations to limit or lower reimbursements for Medicare providers beginning in 2014,” Devon Harrick of the National Center for Policy Analysis explained in The Washington Examiner. “While the law prohibits rationing of care or reducing benefits, it does not prohibit policies that would ultimately have the same effect. Faced with the limitation on rationing, the board will have few options other than reductions of payments to providers. Seniors already face difficulty finding primary care physicians who will treat them. IPAB will exacerbate that problem.
Ryan said that Obama’s failure to reform Medicare will destroy it. “We’re the ones who continue the guarantee of Medicare for people in or near retirement,” Ryan told Hume. “And you have to reform it for the younger generation in order to make the commitment stick for the current generation. President Obama is actually damaging medicare for current seniors — it’s irrefutable.”
The newest member of the presidential campaign reiterated that “we don’t want President Obama’s 15 bureaucrats making decisions” while discussing Republican proposals.
“Seniors get to choose how their Medicare benefits are delivered to them,” Ryan said. “We think that’s the best [way] versus raiding the program like President Obama proposes and having these bureaucrats cut Medicare in a way that will lead to denied care for current seniors.”
Ryan argued his Medicare reforms represent the only plan on the table to save the program. “We’re the ones who continue the guarantee of medicare for people in or near retirement,” he said. “And you have to reform it for the younger generation in order to make the commitment stick for the current generation. President Obama is actually damaging medicare for current seniors. It’s irrefutable.”
You can watch the full interview in the video above.
