Is it a voucher? Technically, no. Ryan’s plan is something called “premium support.” Unlike a voucher, where the money goes to the person, premium support is a subsidy that goes directly to the health insurance company.
What’s the difference? In Ryan’s view, there’s a huge difference. Ever since the House Budget Committee chairman first started promoting the budget plan before its release in April, he has insisted that his Medicare plan is premium support, not a voucher. The difference, to Ryan, is that premium support is more like the health care plans for members of Congress, or the Medicare prescription drug program — where consumers can pick which plan they want and the federal government pays for it.
In practical terms, though, that distinction probably won’t make much of a difference to seniors’ pocketbooks.
Isn’t that what a voucher is, when you partially pay for something on someone’s behalf, and then that someone can go and collect that something if they pay the balance that the voucher doesn’t cover? Are we supposed to call these things “gift certificates” or what?
People don’t use weasel words like “premium support” when they think they’ve got the upper hand.
A voucher by any other name would still smell as foul. This is vouchers, v-o-u-c-h-e-r-s.
Hunter Gathers
It’s not a voucher. It’s a coupon. (the cash value of this coupon is less than 1/20th of a cent)
Cliff in NH
Le Sigh, No one cares about the banksters.
https://balloon-juice.com/2011/06/01/banksters-caught-in-the-immigration-crossfire/#comment-2614235
kdaug
In measured hundred weight and penny pound.
A scrip to pay half what you owe the insurer – when times are good. Ain’t good for anything else if you’re healthy this month – won’t cover much if you ain’t.
Old as the Pharaohs. Never got less wrong.
Thoughtcrime
@Hunter Gathers:
Just tell grandpa that it’s like S&H Green Stamps.
Cliff in NH
Voucher = Cash grant that you can only spend on the service designated on the voucher
“premium support”= Cash grant that you can only spend on the service designated by the “premium support” voucher.
Looks Identical to me.
Cliff in NH
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voucher
Hunter Gathers
@Thoughtcrime: Or for those not old enough to remember those stamps, just tell them it’s like a half-off pizza coupon.
MoeLarryAndJesus
Just call them chips, because they’d be used to play health care roulette.
eemom
the nomenclature is not important. The truth is. The truth, which has been expounded upon many times here and elsewhere, is that this is an attempt to take away from old, sick people the security of having their medical bills paid, and thrusting them instead into a bewildering morass of misery, confusion, and suffering until they die.
PeakVT
To me, “premium support” sounds even worse than “voucher.” It just has that New and Improved! marketing department feel to it.
Martin
It realllllly depends on how it’s implemented, and not only is it not clear from Ryans plan how those details play out, the GOP has been demagoguing against the non-voucher implementation for ages, so either they’re just flat out fucking lying about that, or they’re going to do the same thing and are terrified to tell everyone.
The detail is this:
If they’re basically building a giant Medicare Part C plan, then it’s not a voucher. The insurers would submit policy drafts to CMS to provide services at the premium support level. Unlike the current Part C plans which have a strict set of services that must be covered, presumably these new plans would vary somewhat by year as the amount of Medicare funding varies. On top of that, seniors could still purchase supplemental insurance which again would vary somewhat by year. Now, the only way this works is by a very heavy handed regulatory structure, something which CMS didn’t have until ACA was passed, and which the GOP is pushing hard against. This is your ‘death panels’.
If they’re going with a less regulated market and less power to CMS then you’re going to have something that looked like the early days of Part D where you had plans all over the map, with varying levels of additional premiums.
I was arguing with my mom over this issue and finally convinced her that unlike the current structure where the average Medicare cost is, say $8000, Ryans plan would have insurers start pricing their plans at $8000, because who the fuck would be so stupid to price it lower when that first $8000 is free money sitting on the table? Plans will start at $8K and go up from there with various ‘hooks’ to get that sweet drug coverage, etc. The average price under Ryans plan is going to soar because there is ZERO incentive to insurers to take less than $8K from the government right off the top. Sure, the government’s cost will be capped at $8K, but what voters are starting to realize is that the GOP is swapping out a defined benefit plan for a defined contribution one. And everyone out who was alive in 2008 and 2009 knows the difference between a pension and a stock-invested 401K and who got fucked in that trade from DBP to DCP.
Joseph Nobles
At last! “Voucher” has hit the focus-group-no-no word list as “privatization.”
Doesn’t the word “support” promote dependence? Aren’t we supposed to be kicking the government crutch?
Thoughtcrime
Just like how Ryan and Boehner are planning on issuing “R&B” Orange Stamps for oldsters to exchange for healthcare and meds!
NobodySpecial
They can’t say vouchers, if they say vouchers then the resultant blowback will also hurt their attempts to privatize the school systems.
Joseph Nobles
@Martin: Much better way of explaining this. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
kdaug
@Martin:
I’ve heard of those… back in the “Leave It To Beaver” days, right?
Dusty old meme is dusty.
ETA: No slam on you Martin, at all. You clearly know a great deal more about this than I. More a commentary on our political realities than you as a poster.
Quicksand
WHY WON’T OBAMA SHOW HIS GIFT CERTIFICATE?
FlipYrWhig
It sounds like Groupon.
Cliff in NH
@eemom:
The truth is, the nomenclature states that a bond which is worth a certain monetary value and which may be spent only for specific reasons or on specific goods is a Voucher.
Batocchio
“Coupons for Codgers” is Roy Edroso’s term. Boy, that is some weak BS from Politico. That’s their angle this week for claiming that Ryan is a cruel fraud, and that the Dems are lying about his horrible plan?
Jewish Steel
Ryan’s got vouchers like marsupials got pouchers.
(Another strike against vouchers; they don’t rhyme with nothin’ and forced me write the preceding abomination)
Jenny
If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and waddles like a duck, it’s “premium support”
Cliff in NH
Vouchers, Ouchers, There goes my wallet.
Hmm… that needs work.
Comrade Kevin
I’d like to take a “voucher” and shove it right up Ryan’s nose.
Martin
@kdaug: Actually, what exists under ACA is pretty good – CMS got a lot more power to regulate under ACA. CMS has already taken a big fucking stick to the Medicare C plans. They reduced the cost of the plans and increased the coverage. They killed off a few hundred plans (some states regulate plans by county, so the number of plans really gets nutty) and that’s going to hurt some seniors who will need to pick a new plan, and may not like changing doctor, etc. but it’s less intrusive than what any GOP plan is likely to result in.
CMS simply didn’t have the power to really put the screws to the Part C and D plans like they can now, and from what I’ve heard from the folks that were negotiating these plans on the part of insurers, they really had to work hard this cycle, and something like half of existing plans got a warning that their quality scores are low enough to put them in jeopardy next year and they need to improve. I think this is going to kill off a lot of the smaller plans.
Chris T.
@Martin:
This is a very nice (and correct) point.
The New Zealand government has a sort of “voucher system” for refrigerators. A refrigerator is considered a basic life necessity, so the government provides a $500 (NZ$) subsidy—a voucher, in other words—to someone buying a refrigerator.
The result is that refrigerator prices in New Zealand start at NZ$500, no matter how tiny the fridge.
Comrade Kevin
I’m watching “Too Big To Fail” right now, and it makes me want to run around Wall Street with a sword and engage in some Game of Thrones action.
Yutsano
Insert pithy clever comment here. As soon as I come up with one I’ll be more than happy to share.
Cliff in NH
@Comrade Kevin:
You better not read ECONned then.
http://www.amazon.com/ECONned-Unenlightened-Undermined-Democracy-Capitalism/dp/0230114563/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1306996249&sr=8-1
ed: hopefully this is a balloon juice enhanced link. I tried.
Thoughtcrime
@Cliff in NH:
Vouchers are for slouchers.
Jewish Steel
@Cliff in NH:
@Thoughtcrime:
Alright. You both schooled me. Back to rap-college, I guess.
FlipYrWhig
@Jewish Steel:
“Premium support”? Ryan, please, it’s a voucher.
Your plan got less play than Jonah Goldberg at Goucher.
kdaug
@Martin:
Now see, this baffles. I worked at TDI a few years in my upbringing. (That’s Texas Department of Insurance for you folk.)
And yes, even us succeedin’ lovin’, knuckle-draggin’ cowboys do have a remotely functional insurance oversight agency.
But county-based plan regulation? How is that not blatant redlining (ie, illegal)? Just “local control” blahblahblah?
I mean, how do they even get it in the door?
Spaghetti Lee
@Jewish Steel:
I majored in sucka-playin’ with a minor in booty-shakin’ at Rap College.
Steeplejack
WTF?!
No, money that “goes to the person” would be like, uh, a tax refund or a big-gubmint socialist welfare payment or something like that. You know–cold, hard cash that I could use to buy T-bones. The very definition of a voucher is pretty much what this article calls “a subsidy that goes directly to the health insurance company,” not the individual.
Jeez, they are really trying to rend the fabric of the space-time continuum.
Q.Q. Moar
@FlipYrWhig: Rap Battles, ur doing it right.
asiangrrlMN
@Jewish Steel:
No matter how you coucher, it’s still a fucking voucher.
It’s a fucking voucher, and it’ll ouch, hurt.
Don’t vote for cloture, it’s a fucking voucher.
It’ll give much hurt because it’s a fucking voucher.
Don’t be a doucher; it’s a fucking voucher.
Where the fuck is my rusty pitchfork?
Cliff in NH
@kdaug:
Oooo!! Ooo!, I know, how about someone comment on the federal preemption thread now ehh?
https://balloon-juice.com/2011/06/01/banksters-caught-in-the-immigration-crossfire/#comment-2614235
Jenny
O.T.
Dana Houle makes a good point, can you imagine how the media would be mocking a Democrat if he/she ate a slice of pizza with a fork.
asiangrrlMN
@Steeplejack: Hi, Steepman. How you be? This thread needs moar go-go dancers to cheer us all up!
Jewish Steel
@FlipYrWhig: Wow! Esoteric and accurate. And insulting! The trifecta. Time to quit that day job and start cooking up some fresh beats for those rhymes.
@Spaghetti Lee: I mainly got my books dumped in the hallways,
Warren Terra
This dude’s definition of a “voucher” is insane. I can’t think of any situation where his meaning would apply, where you cash your voucher in for money and then spend the money on the designated product.
Still, I’m not sure “voucher” is the right word, because I think of a “voucher” as being something redeemable for a product – not something redeemable for a piece of a product, and especially not redeemable for less of that product every year. So I would call the Ryan plan more of a coupon offer, or a discount offer.
asiangrrlMN
@Jewish Steel: AHEM. Please see my entry at #37. kthxbai.
@Cliff in NH: I LOVE Molly videos! She makes me smile at how energetic, happy, and bee-yew-tee-ful she is.
(I know she’s beautiful, though she’s full-action here. And, I actually WATCH this video for the…go-go dancers).
Cliff in NH
@asiangrrlMN:
I’ll put up Molly with the zoomies as a alternate, no soundtrack, so maybe play yours and mine at the same time =)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub5PagRaHkc
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: Voulez-vouz coucher avec mon voucher?
Yeah, I’m not too fond of it either.
Hi hon. Pooped. That’s about all.
Jewish Steel
@asiangrrlMN: Whoa! How did I miss that?
I’ll tell you how; it was too real. Your pitchfork weighs a ton, grrl D.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: It cracked ME the fuck up! That’s what’s important here.
ETA: Also, important, how is Lexie?
@Cliff in NH: Ooooooh! Molly stood still for a second or two! There’s that happy grin of hers.
@Jewish Steel: You have me PIED! That’s how you missed it. Sob, sob. My heart, it is teh broken. (More prosaically, we probably posted at the same time).
Martin
@kdaug: Yeah, it’s pretty remarkable that they do it, but they do – Iowa, SD, I think Nebraska. From what I’ve seen, places where the co-op loomed large tend to have this kind of setup. I’m not sure how CMS manages it. An Iowa insurer might run 99 (one per county) Part C plans, some of which may get qualified by CMS and some which don’t, but that’s the state structure.
I know part of it was set up to help solve the rural care problem, which these states tend to suffer from, and which people tend to overlook. Let’s take Iowa. Most of the state population is centered in a handful of cities, the largest of which is fortunately fairly central to the state. But to the north, there’s just nothing. There’s not enough people out there to build an efficient care system. No hospital can have cardiologists and pediatricians on staff 24/7 to take care of the one urgent case per week that comes in the door. So, nobody is going to build shit out there. But they’re far enough away from Des Moines or Minneapolis that if they need to be medivaced to those cities, the likelihood they’ll die before they arrive is pretty high. So how do you convince care providers to build facilities in places that are pretty much guaranteed to lose money? Iowa solves it by doing this county regulation deal. 99 counties, all about equal size. If you want to build a facility in Des Moines, you may be required to also build one in Estherville. I don’t think anyone is allowed to own two facilities in the same county, and they have all sorts of weird rules such as if you close down a hospital, the replacement has to be in the same county and provide the same services, even if the replacement is across the street from another hospital with the same services and could benefit from complementary services. It’s all pretty stupid in the end, but there’s a certain reasoning behind why they did what they did.
And nobody has offered up a real solution to the rural care problem, which it should be noted, makes the red states really fucking expensive to provide Medicare services in, which is why their Medicaid match is higher than more urban states. But pay for it? No fucking way. Honestly, Republicans are the biggest fucking leeches.
FlipYrWhig
@Yutsano:
Winning.
Jewish Steel
@asiangrrlMN: Nevah, evah! cleek would revoke my pie licence if he caught me doing it. I’m sure of it.
@Yutsano:
Bril.
FlipYrWhig
@Jewish Steel: @Q.Q. Moar: Thx.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: @FlipYrWhig: Note to self: blog more when tired.
asiangrrlMN
@Jewish Steel: Well, good. Because I was just going to rescind my offer to be hot CD seller girl/roadie manager for your gig.
But, if I remember correctly, it was postponed because you had surgery? How you be?
@Yutsano: That’s when I do MY best blogging.
ETA: Rafael Nadal. Yum.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: I was drooling over some of the nummier members of the Canucks earlier. YMMV of course.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: So. Not. My. Type. And, I was rooting for the Bruins.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: So. Not. My. Type. And, I was rooting for the Bruins.
asiangrrlMN
Why for I cannot edit….GAH. FYWPWAVRPFRITE!
@Yutsano: Why was I rooting for the Bruins? Because of this, damn it.
@Jewish Steel: YOU FUNNY! Night. Sleep well. Oh, and get a recording of the show!
Jewish Steel
@asiangrrlMN: I haven’t mustered the courage to start down that road yet. Taking a little vacay in June, then when I get back, we’ll see. It’s not life threatening so my motivation is low. So very low.
But I am playing a local solo show next week, so that’s exciting.
I’m being called to bed. Good night, Lil’ MN! (like lil kim, geddit?)
freelancer
@Yutsano:
Okay, that is too great.
Cliff in NH
The reason the Banksters get away with their $h!t is because nobody cares to pay attn.
At least read the Banksters thread guys.
https://balloon-juice.com/2011/06/01/banksters-caught-in-the-immigration-crossfire/#comment-2614235
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: You were rooting for the Bruins because of Lee Greenwood??
@freelancer: Take my heritage, my exhaustion, and my general pithiness, shake in a martini shaker, garnish with a lemon twist and a maraschino cherry. Not quite a PanGalactic GargleBlaster. But close.
Hard is typing with kitteh in face.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: Because I’m PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN, DAMN IT!
Not really. I just like ’em and their unis better.
Your coucher/voucher is great, but too Frenchy-French and double-entendre for our purposes. No one would get it.
And, try typing with a cat sacked out in your arms. VERY difficult.
ETA: Here comes said cat.
ETA II: Rafa. Sigh.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: You got it. Honestly that’s good enough for me. And I’ve been seriously considering beefing up my francais lately. No real reason.
:: whistles innocently ::
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: High-five! Mon dieu. Are you looking northward, Yutsy?
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: Well there is something I could do with the IRS that would be based out of the American embassy up there. There is still a hiring freeze and the competition for these positions is really high. But it would be fun.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: Dood. I’m all for it. It would be really cool. Vancouver?
@Yutsano: Cool. I adore Vancouver. It’s a great city.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: Ifn all goes well and the attache position there is open. For what I’m trained to do the IRS more or less lurves to poach us. We move to do all kinds of stuff all across the service. Plus I could show Canuckistanis how we deal with tax cheaters.
freelancer
@asiangrrlMN:
You are SO purposefully squinting while reading this post’s title.
asiangrrlMN
@freelancer: “I’m going to Vancouver, bitchez, ‘coz it’s a fucking voucher!”
Just call me Lil’ MN!
Melikey.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: Okay the wrongness quotient increaseth. Methinks it’s my cue to adjourn. Night y’all.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: OK, fine. Abandon me now. Harrumph. Sleep well.
slightly-peeved
If Ryan thinks his plan for seniors is like the care congress gets, surely he should be supporting the ACA, since the exchanges are to be run by the same people and in the same manner as the current federal employee health insurance scheme. The dishonesty from Ryan and Politico on this point is particularly brazen.
ProgressiveTechie
If it walks like a duck…
Jebediah
@Cliff in NH:
It’s not that I don’t care about them. It’s that I want so fervently for them to fall into a live volcano I worry I might say or do something unseemly.
jayackroyd
Just so long as you remember that “premium support” is a “progressive” policy proposal, a term originally coined by Henry Aaron. It was a core component of a “bipartisan” Medicare reform effort in the late nineties.
See this pdf, for instance: http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/19/5/84.full.pdf
The reason, IMO, Ryan described his proposal is because he thought the various progressive think tanks, like the Progressive Policy Institute, had inoculated proposals against the “voucher” charge with that artful construction.
And, of course, the PPI still does support “premium support” as the core means to “reform” Medicare, not to mention characterizes Ryan as “daring.”
“Premium support” is a “pragmatic” “progressive” policy proposal, in opposition to liberals who support the New Deal social safety net for the middle class. Ryan figured he was on safe “bipartisan” ground in adopting their proposals, as, I believe, the administration did when it adopted GOP policy proposals like the individual mandate.
http://bit.ly/jq6aXf
georgia pig
@Martin: They’re not leeches, they’re just providing America with all those Small Town ValuesTM. Seriously, that’s the essence of wingnut. You treat all the cost externalization of your tribe as a birthright and bitch about everyone else’s cost externalization. It’s group projection.
georgia pig
@jayackroyd:
If it quacks like a duck, it is a duck. It changes from the premise of Medicare — defined benefits — to a defined contribution.
As Rivlin pointed out, the Ryan plan is not what she would endorse because it keeps “premium support” at levels too far below health care cost inflation. She also was for offering a choice between traditional Medicare and “premium support”, which the Ryan plan lacks. Your comments reveal the truth. The Ryan Plan is a scam that tries to dress itself up as something else using some progressive language.
Nice try at creating a false choice. The squeezing of public investment is largely a product of ridiculous tax policy for a developed nation with world wide defense obligations and financial involvement and that makes no effort to control monopoly rent-seeking in the health care sector or control financial shenanigans. But no, let’s make grandma and state governments with no pricing power regulate health care costs. It’s complete bullshit.
jayackroyd
Dammit.
I always forget the blockquote tag autocloses at paragraph breaks here.
[snip]
The above is all from Will Marshall’s linked PPI post, April 2011.
Joseph Nobles
@jayackroyd: “a block grant could dampen inflationary pressures and protect taxpayers against the automatic and unsustainable growth of public health care spending.”
“…preventing rapid entitlement spending growth from squeezing vital public investments in children and families, scientific research, infrastructure and a clean environment.”
If we limit how much the government spends on health care, we will stop the government from spending on health care! How about that!
If we all band together to put Grandma on the ice floe, we can have clean air and food stamps! Yay!
Get the fuck outa here. Seriously, Ryan’s plan does nothing to combat the actual rise in healthcare costs overall. It just makes sure the government can’t have any real role in affecting this. It’s nothing but building the fortress around the private sector’s ability to charge what the hell it wants to the consumer by neutering the government. And pointing out we can all feast well once the old people are left to fend for themselves isn’t going to sway any actual progressive to your cause, no matter how pretty the language you use to dress it up.
ETA: OK, it’s good to know that what I took to be you talking was a quote. Your later post made that clear. But, Jesu, what bullshit!
jayackroyd
@georgia pig:
First, sorry for the formatting error. That was Will Marshall talking, not me. I agree that it is complete bullshit, part of standard Third Way Orwellian language, where, for instance, “premium support” is not a “voucher.”
Are you saying that PPI doesn’t support premium support? That Will Marshall here is actually suggesting we retain Medicare as we know it?
I haven’t seen Rivlin saying that seniors should be able to opt out of premium support. Do you have a link?
I HAVE seen where Aaron has repudiated premium support, post the GOP adoption of shrinking premium support over time. But this WAS his coinage, and WAS, in my opinion, a purposeful attempt to slip vouchers into the mix–ultimately, as Aaron says in his seminal paper on the subject, shifting more of the payment burden onto seniors, in order to reduce “utilization.”
Various links related to this are here: http://bit.ly/ik1oNL
jayackroyd
@Joseph Nobles:
Again, I apologize for messing up the block quote.
But, please, please, note who is saying this. This is the Progressive Policy Institute. This is “pragmatic progressivism.” Ryan is making an attempt to be bipartisan, adopting the language of the New Democrats, of the progressive movement embodied in the democratic policy elites in Washington.
He is being bipartisan in the same way PPI, and the president are adopting pragmatic progressive compromises like HPACA instead of liberal plans like Medicare’s single payer plan or socialist plans like the VA. He is following the Dole/Daschle path of private/public partnership, where insurance companies and Big Pharma are stakeholders in the health care system.
jayackroyd
PPACA.
Sheesh.
Off to find a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. We’ve seen three trees with the characteristic lines of holes.
http://c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000cPscqSCTg7M/s/750/750/Sapsucker-Holes-60-BRD-0143.jpg
No bird yet. Pileated Woodpecker pair, though.
jcgrim
Frank Lutz is testing out a new euphemism for Ryan’s weapon- of-medicare-destruction plan.
Gotta hand it to the R’s. They don’t give up on any of their plans, no matter how crazy or unpopular it might be.
JMC_in_the_ATL
@kdaug: Small world. That’s where I work now.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
vouchercare is ok, but vulturecare sounds better, and even if the overton window shifts on the meaning of voucher, they still have to explain why the gop isn’t letting its corporate bosses hover over the soon-to-be corpses.
Georgia Pig
@jayackroyd: I kind of wondered if it was someone else you were quoting, so tried to just attack the arguments. I don’t have link to Rivlin, but I do recall her on one of the news shows basically saying she would not support the vouchers as envisioned in Ryan’s plan. I’m not a big fan of Rivlin anyway, because she spouts a lot of “the deficit is going to eat us all!” Beltway conventional wisdom. Any DLC type who signs on to what Ryan is proposing as some sort of “compromise” is an idiot. That post from Marshall is, at best naive as hell, or, at worst, duplicitous. Aside from the health care vouchers, the rest of Ryan’s plan is standard supply side magic fairy dust, i.e., so much for the Republicans signing on to “a more comprehensive strategy to contain health care costs.” They just want to cut taxes for the wealthy and protect their bond portfolios. They don’t care about the costs to others, because those aren’t their problem — just let Grampa find a policy to cover his cataracts, diabetes, heart disease, etc.
Silver Owl
The stench of a marketing team involved in making a shit plan smell and sound like a gourmet dinner to the republican base fools is suffocating.
If only today’s republican would, like, actually work on viable plans that would, I don’t know, have a chance of working. Those family values must not include that.
Nylund
The GOP is trying to have it both ways on this “definition” war.
“vouchers”: Even though it acts and quacks like a duck, you can’t call it a duck! If you call it a duck, you’re a liar.
“Medicare”: Even though it moos and gives milk, you must call it a duck! If you claim its not a duck, you’re a liar.
Garbled
Voucher or premium support, how is it not rationing? Grandma thinks the Republicans driving her healthcaremobile just turned down a street marked “DEAD END” and she’s sounding a bit distressed.
Mutant Poodle
@jayackroyd: I’d point you to Ezra Klein, on Hardball, laying the “Premium Support” argument to rest:
The reason no progressive organization will provide cover to Ryan’s plan is that there is, as constituted, no protection for the insured against significant premium increases. Whereas Democrats lifted whole sections of the ACA from previous Republican health care proposals, about which, it appears, said Republicans were not sincere.
rikryah
VOUCHERCARE
IS
VOUCHERCARE
IS
VOUCHERCARE
Bulworth
Premimum Supporter isn’t a voucher because shut up that’s why.
LongHairedWeirdo
The way I heard it from someone else, a “premium support” plan is essentially a voucher plan, but the support remains the same. It’s like, “we’ll pay 80% of your health insurance premiums”. Or, “we’ll pay the first $5000, and if your premiums go up 5%, we’ll increase the support by 5%.”
True? Not true? I don’t know.
But I’ll guarantee you that I know the big reason why the Ryan plan claims to have “premium support”. “Premium support” polls better than “voucher”.
iriedc
As folks at the top of the thread already suggested that this is a coupon program, I’ll say Vouchercare or CouponCare without a quibble. I do have a draw full of expired coupons BTW, is Ryan willing to redeem them too? Lots of 2-for-1 deals.
PWL
Well, it’s like we didn’t have “tax increases” under Reagan. We had “revenue enhancements.”
Tehanu
Unlike a voucher, where the money goes to the person, premium support is a subsidy that goes directly to the health insurance company.
Uh… and telling people to vote in favor of a subsidy for friggin’ health insurance companies is a good thing that polls well?