Paul Ryan's Plan Will Ration Health Care by Ability to Pay Even More Than It Already Is.

Even today, the elderly have considerable out of pocket expense when it comes to health care. I know my retired parents pay $800 per month (I think...I just know it's a hell of a lot more than they should have to pay) for health care insurance, in addition to Medicare coverage. And, now Medicare (government sponsored single payer health care system for the approximately 47 million elderly) may be eliminated entirely if deficit-cutting, supply-sider, Representative Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, gets his way.

Ryan's plan relies on vouchers - which the federal contribution will be pegged to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) - that future retirees can use to buy private health insurance. Here's the thing: the inflation rate of healthcare expenses (and private insurance costs) rises three times faster than the CPI.  The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that by 2030, retirees will pay 68%  out of pocket, compared with the 25% the elderly  pay now.  Not to mention, those retiring in  ten years, will- if the current trend continues - have very little to no savings at all.

We often hear that demographics, or the growth of the aging population is what's responsible for driving health care costs sky-high.  Not so, says health care economist Uwe Reinhardt of Princeton University. He claims that the growth in the aging population (occurs at a glacial pace) only accounts for one-half of one percent of the 6% inflation rate of healthcare expenses (and private insurance costs). So, what drives the cost?
The supply side of the health care system. That's right, the private sector (physicians, especially specialists, hospitals, pharmaceuticals, etc.), who continue to increase prices. Americans pay twice the amount for everything from doctor visits to medicine, than every other country.

Now Ryan will lie to tell  you that he has the same type of health care insurance. This is not true, as his plan is not pegged to the CPI; the federal contributions in his plan keep pace with the inflation rate of healthcare costs.

On the critical metric of whether the Ryan plan would reduce total health-care costs [] the CBO conclusion is shocking: The plan would not only fail to decrease health-care costs per beneficiary, it would increase them — by an astonishingly large amount that grows over time. By 2030, health spending on the typical beneficiary would be more than 40 percent higher under the Ryan plan than under existing Medicare, according to the CBO report.

....How could this possibly be, when the point of reform is to reduce costs? The CBO points to two factors: Private plans have higher administrative costs than the federal Medicare program, and less negotiating leverage with providers-- Peter Orszag

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Poverty Traps Set By the Rich to Ensnare More and More.

North Philadelphia

Today, I was listening to Marty Moss-Coane, host of NPR's Radio Times revisit the discussion on the culture of poverty. Towards the end of the show, a hospice nurse, who used to work in North Philadelphia called in and relayed his experience working in the second hungriest congressional district in the nation, according to Gallup Healthways Index.

He said, that oftentimes when attending to the dying elderly people in this area, he noticed the feeding tubes ran dry earlier than usual. Much to his dismay, he found out the reason.  The children were drinking the predigested food straight from the tubes they were so hungry.  Personally, I can't even imagine that kind of hunger, but it's much more common than any of us think.

In contrast, less than five miles away, the  Philadelphia Main Line ranks as one of the nation's highest concentration of millionaires, or highest per capita income in the U.S.  The contradiction between the juxtaposing areas within a span of a few miles is truly amazing.

Years ago, while still in college, I visited a friend who resides on the Main Line, in a mansion similar to the mansion pictured below.  I convinced him to go into Philadelphia with me, not realizing how sheltered he was.  As we were walking along a well traveled street near University of Penn, we passed a homeless man, propped up by  a bulging pillowcase with all  his belongings, and huddled over a steam vent to keep warm,  unfortunately something I'd seen many times before. However, much to my amazement, my friend was in shock. Not only had he never seen the homeless, he had never heard of the homeless.  Just a blatant example of the segregation that allows us to blind ourselves to the poverty in America.

Formerly known as “Rathalla” “home of the chieftain upon the highest hill” in Gaelic, summer home of Joseph Francis Sinnott who immigrated to the US from County Donegal in Ireland in 1854. Now, the centerpiece of Rosemont University on the Main Line.

The twenty-first century ushers in an unprecedented level of inequality in our "rags-to-riches" nation. However, here's the truth: The child born to poor parents is almost 30 times more likely to stay poor. The child born to wealthy parents is more than 10 times more likely to stay wealthy.

Poverty traps.

Since the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, opportunities for escaping poverty grow fewer while constraints continue to increase, condemned millions of poor women and children to downward mobility. The patchwork of scattered assistance programs do not work together, and are not well-known.  Therefore, navigating the welfare system becomes a full time job in and of itself, leaving those with the least amount of resources, the least amount of time to get on the ladder. Forget about climbing it.

Poverty in America is a family of four making $22,000 or below; 15% of all Americans live in poverty. One in five American children live in poverty, and 30% of all African-American and Hispanic children live in poverty.  These numbers are increasing, leaving far too many people, in a country as wealthy as ours, who are just about surviving, let alone, thriving.

The Well-Being Index composite result is an average of six domains: life
0 (bottom) -100 (top) Scale evaluation, emotional health, physical health, healthy behaviors, work
environment and basic access.

Links:

City, State, Congressional District Well-Being Reports

Stretched Thin: Poor Families, Welfare Work, and Welfare Reform -

“I feel like poverty just … it’s a vicious cycle, I mean if you get your head above that water, then they’re going to drop you. …You know they are going to let the air out of your lifejacket, and you go back down to the bottom rung again.” -- an Oregon hospice worker with three teen-aged children.

Culture of poverty

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