I feel bad that with everything going on in Wisconsin, the horror show that is paul ryan has slipped through the cracks. Here is the perfect place to start.
Robert Parry from Consortiumnews, takes a 55 year old “tea partier” 10 years into the future after his hero paul ryan gets his budget and ‘roadmap’ passed.
Then, let’s dial ahead a decade or so when the activist is reaching retirement age. Let’s assume he was lucky enough to have had a job that offered health insurance, which enabled him to handle his diabetes and to get his wife treated for her cancer.
But now he is heading off into the cherished “free market” with what amounts to an $8,000 government voucher to buy health insurance.
The only problem is that $8,000 doesn’t get you very far with the private insurance companies, whose principal responsibility – as any Ayn Rand fan knows – is to return a hefty profit to shareholders. For someone over 65 with a checkered health history, the insurance companies won’t exactly be lining up to take on his business.
The Tea Partier can expect to pay – on top his $8,000 government “premium support” – perhaps $1,000 a month or more, along with a hefty deductible, perhaps another $5,000, and after that, co-pays. Plus, since thankfully Obamacare was repealed by Congress (or struck down by Republican justices), the insurance companies don’t have to cover any of those pesky preexisting conditions.
So, his diabetes drugs are excluded. And if his wife’s cancer flares up again, that treatment would have to come out of his pocket as well.
Plus, since the insurance companies were liberated from Obamacare’s oppressive regulations requiring that 80 percent or so of premiums go to actual health care, the industry will have every right to short-change its customers, while paying fat salaries to top executives and enjoying lavish corporate perks
.
Ryan Supporter: “it about freedom and the free market. Just like our Founders planned it.
Ghost of Paul Ryans future: You my friend, have lots of choices. Let me show you.
Not too far into his “golden years,” our Tea Partier will find his money gone but his health needs growing. Then, he’ll have the freedom to turn to his children and beg them to chip in for his and his wife’s health expenses, even if that means deferring their own dreams and ignoring the needs of the grandkids.
Or, he can choose to go without medical treatments, hoping that his wife’s cancer won’t spread too quickly and that his diabetes won’t require amputations. He might not even be able to afford the amputations, so the real freedom that he’ll face is the freedom to die prematurely.
Ryan Supporter: At least the economy will be booming because of a balanced budget right Mr. Ghost of Paul Ryan’s Future.
GOPRF: (menacing laugh) Hahahahahahahhahaahahahhahahahhaahahahha….Paul Ryan really did have the nerve to say that didn’t he. Let’s take a look.
while Ryan’s 2012 budget got rid of Medicare for people who were then 55 or younger, much of the savings went to reducing the tax rates for millionaires and billionaires, to 25 percent from 35 percent, the lowest rate since the early days of the Great Depression.
The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center puts the cost of the Ryan tax cuts for the rich at $2.9 trillion over the next decade.
Ryan’s 2012 proposal doesn’t envision balancing the budget for almost 30 years. So, as the Tea Partier hobbles through his late 60s, suffering through insurance-induced poverty and anticipating an early death, the prospect of the government having its fiscal house in order will still be a hazy future promise, maybe a decade or more still to go.
Ryan Supporter: There is no way that Paul Ryan would ever allow this. He is a fiscal conservative and has the best interests of America at heart.
GOPRF: There he is.
Ryan Supporter: That’s not Paul Ryan.
GOPRF: No that is his gardner. Paul Ryan lives in that gated multi-million dollar home. Once he passed his budget and roadmap(snicker), he had given everything he promised to corporate America so he retired and cashed in his chips. With the favors that the CEO’s owed him, he became a highly paid lobbyist and made millions. Now he only leaves his castle once a year to do a fund raiser for the local food pantry here in Janesville. It is so busy that they can’t keep the shelves stocked. The problem is when he does he has so much security you can barely get a glimpse of him.
Ryan Supporter: Security???
GOPRF: Yes there are still some people here in WI who remember what a great state it was and are very upset with Paul Ryan for selling it out. They just have to protest anonymously or else the Koch Brothers won’t hire them. Recently the protestors all donned masks and dumped tea into the Rock River.
Ryan Supporter: I just had a sense of Deja vu…
GOPRF: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA
Fade to black………..
I hope all the Tea Partiers out there saved their ” Keep Your Government Hands Off My Medicare ” signs they waved around during the health insurance reform debate. I further hope they’re preparing to take them down to a protest at Paul Ryans Janesville office. Maybe Matt Seaholm can herd them all into an Americans for Prosperity bus to tell Paul Ryan,
” Keep Your Government Hands Off My Medicare “.
Maybe Notalib can join them and holler:
” Corporashions Muest Paye Thier Fair Shair! “
The twitters report that one line Ryan scribbled was “campaigner in chief.” Because his boy hero act is truly principled, you see.
As we saw with their last “grassroots” bus tour, there is plenty of room on that bus.
Yes Sven I love when the biggest political hacks there are, accuse everyone of playing “politics”
I’m not sure how this voucher scheme really works. They are calling it a voucher. I just find it hard to believe the government will send out 8,000 dollar checks to tens of millions of people every year. Not only that, you’re going to have those pay day loan folks offering you 5000 cash right now in return for your voucher. Let’s hope they make that illegal.
Point being this, this smells like it will be a tax credit. Meaning, you have to foot the entire bill yourself then write off 8 grand on your taxes. Republicans don’t like giving out vouchers. They like giving out tax breaks.
I really find it hard to believe the government will send out millions of 8,000 dollar vouchers once a year.
Ah but Sam…$8,000 is but peanuts compared to what some people need for health care. My second wife spent two weeks in intensive care and not quite one week on the floor before they dumped her into a nursing home. She passed away within hours of reaching that nursing home because they didn’t have the ability to keep her on enough oxygen. And that brief stay in the hospital? $103,000. Thank God for Medicare as that would have put me on the streets.
This article paints a very sorrowful future for anyone not a multi-millionaire if the republicans have their way. Do you know anyone like that?
a very sorrowful but very realistic picture if Paul ryan has his way
Here’s another thing. I’m sure people will be grandfathered (grandmothered) in. So at some point there will be half the people on RyanCare and half the people on MediCare.
Seems like a nightmare to me. Probably need some government growth to handle that. Why don’t they just fix what we alread have?
I find it hard to believe that Paul Ryan gives a good goddamn about anything other than his career and his ” cause “, which is destroying the New Deal and the Great Society simply because his uber-creepy heroine Ayn Rand told him, essentially, to do so.
Of course – that’s the entire point of Randian thinking: selfishness is a virtue. To give a damn about others is a character flaw. Which is why Ryan makes every one of his staffers read Rand before beginning work for him.