Bait And Switch: No One Voted To Destroy Medicare

Under the Ryan scheme, seniors and people with disabilities would be forced to fend for themselves against private insurance companies. They would have to bear whatever the insurance companies chose to charge, or go without insurance if they couldn’t afford it. And if Republicans succeed in repealing the ACA with its protection of people with pre-existing conditions, many seniors and people with disabilities now covered by Medicare would be unable to get any coverage whatsoever at any price. Ironically, after railing against Obamacare for years, Ryan and his fellow Republicans want to transform Medicare into Obamacare. The Affordable Care Act is much better than what existed before, but it is much inferior to Medicare.

Not surprisingly, Ryan’s plan to end Medicare has one big problem. The American people –- Democrats, Republicans and Independents -– overwhelmingly support Medicare. Not only is the Ryan plan extremely poor policy, it is also incredibly unpopular. Consistent with the unpopularity of the Ryan plan, Republican primary voters rejected the candidates who embraced it – Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, and Chris Christie, to name the most prominent of the primary’s losers.

Instead, Republican primary voters picked Donald Trump, who made a solemn promise to voters, differentiating himself from the others by declaring loudly and often that he would not cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. He specifically called out Ryan, saying “You know, Paul wants to knock Medicare way down. I’m not going to cut it, and I’m not going to raise ages, and I’m not going to do all of the things that they want to do.”

Trump’s Medicare promise helped carry him to victory in the GOP primary, and again in November. Many advocates, including myself, didn’t trust the promise ? particularly after Trump picked as his running mate Mike Pence, a close Ryan ally who has pushed for Social Security and Medicare privatization for years. But despite that, Trump’s promise not to cut Social Security and Medicare (and the media’s willingness to believe it) kept them from being major issues in the campaign.

Now that Trump is President, however, all signs are that he is planning to to betray his supporters and let Ryan and Pence run the show. Less than a week after the election, Ryan announced that Medicare was “part of our plan” going forward –- clear code for implementing his privatization plan. To this disturbing announcement, Trump was uncharacteristically quiet. Not a single tweet.