Election 2012: Medicare by MSW. MGB: Premium support may actually work in the context of a system of Medicare for everyone - where Medicare is expanded to the entire population and everyone gets a voucher and is community rated - which was previously proposed by Len Burman in the Virginia Tax Review. http://www.urban.org/publications/1001262.html Medicare is actually a small issue in health care reform. More importantly is whether the new requirements for community rating and guaranteed issue sink the private insurance market altogether - in which case we will be left with single payer or a public option if they act before the market collapses. This decision will largely be made by the stock market. If the market is more risk averse than the uninsured - reform will have to be changed.
More urgent for the election is the proposed Medicaid cuts. Two-thirds of Medicaid is for seniors in nursing homes and the disabled, although healthier, richer seniors don't like to think about it until they are too sick to vote. Still, the Ryan proposals in this area will affect seniors as a whole much more than anything proposed on Medicare.
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