Ryan responds to Medicare charges

For the second time this campaign season we talked one on one with GOP Vice Presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan.

We pressed Ryan on his claims about Medicare, his role in the sequestration battle and his thoughts on the negative tone of the campaign.

Here is our entire interview uncut:

We do apologize for the quality of the audio in certain parts of the interview.

I took a deeper look into the Medicare claims debate in my story for NBC12:

Democrats have leveled some pretty serious charges against Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney when it comes to Medicare.  They have called their attacks on Barack Obama's plan "lies".

We took those charges directly to Paul Ryan and he did not back down.

It is the Romney/Ryan campaign's most frequent and devastating attack on Obama.

"Obama cut 716 billion dollars from Medicare," claims a narrator in a recent Romney ad.

It is a charge that has been repeatedly been called into question buy fact checkers and independent experts, in part because it's not a "cut" at all, a fact Paul Ryan conceded to us.

“Is it appropriate to call it a "cut"?” I asked.  “Isn't it a reduction in the growth of spending and isn't that something you've called for yourself?"

“Sure, sure,” Ryan said. “It is a reduction in growth in spending in a way that according to Medicare itself 43% of Medicare advantage seniors would lose their plans."

Before Ryan became a Vice Presidential candidate he was a house budget architect and drew up a controversial budget that called for similar growth reductions to Medicare. A fact democrats like Rep. Bobby Scott (R-Newport News) often point out.

"Paul Ryan's budget included $700 billion in cuts to Medicare," said Scott.

Ryan told me it's not hypocritical for him to criticize a similar reduction plan, because the way they plan to implement their Medicare reform makes more sense.

"We should not compromise the benefits for current seniors, unless you want to use it to pay for Obamacare which we don't," he said. 

Scott counters that the slow implementation of the republican plan is an indicator that it won't work.

"The first thing that ought to occur to people is, what are you being protected from?” he said.

Ryan argues that it is the Obama health care reform plan that won't work, not their gradual reform of Medicare.

"What you need to do is save it for your generation my generation,” he said.  “By putting those reforms in place so we can better guarantee the promise of Medicare as it is known today."

But those reforms are something democrats, like Mayor Dwight Jones (D- Richmond) fear.

"It seems to me that it appears to be an workable solution an unworkable strategy," said Jones.

 

Here are some fact checking articles on the Ryan Medicare claims:

Fact Check (non-partisan)

PolitiFact (non-partisan)

Town Hall (conservative leaning)

Think Progress (liberal leaning)

 

Comments

[Mike Miller]

The minority party has been calling reductions in growth rates proposed by the majority party "cuts" since at least the early 1990s. It is just politically motivated sophistry: Reducing spending growth rates is good, cuts are bad. Ryan's logic really fails in his misunderstanding of healthcare and the positive affects of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) for all Americans, including Medicare enrollees, by improving how healthcare is delivered. Ryan's "healthcare" proposals are all based on economic principles that have been shown to undermine improving healthcare quality and security, i.e. cost-shifting and failing to create structures to hold doctors and hospitals accountable with actionable data.

"Obamacare" doesn't promote cost-shifting, it is generating actionable data, and it is promoting local entities to develop and use that data to hold doctors and hospitals accountable for both their clinical outcomes and overall costs. All of this - along with the insurance reforms and additional Medicare benefits (e.g., annual wellness visits and partially filling the prescription drug "donut hole") - are why the ACA is a solid foundation for improving the US healthcare system, and one that will control long-term healthcare spending, provide predictability and security for employers and employees, and thus help spur economic growth. (Sorry about that very run-on sentence, but healthcare is complex, and simple answers - such as "vouchers" are false solutions.)

[Chris]

Florida has a large number of Medicare Advantage plans alailabve.a0 One reason could be the large population of seniors that retire to the state.a0 The first thing to consider if you are looking for a Medicare Advantage plan in Florida is that the plans are NOT state specific.a0 The are in fact county specific.a0 Check here to look up Medicare Advantage plans by state for 2012.a0 Chances are you will find a company in South Florida that is not at all alailabve in the Northern part of the state.a0 One exception to this is United Healthcare.a0 They offer a plan that is identical across the state.a0 This is probably because of the size of the company.a0 They also offer a large network across the state.Source: medicare-plans.net