Sen. Ryan’s recently introduced budget plan contains several of the previously introduced conservative Republican initiatives, including significant changes to Medicare.
The fundamental question we need to face as a society and considering the privatization of Medicare is not, “can we afford it”, but rather do we as a society wish to protect all of us, or only some of us? Health insurance in so many regards, is a form of protection. And how our society pays for this is secondary to the antecedent question of whether we believe everyone must be protected, harkening back to “The Struggle for the Soul of Health Insurance” by Deborah Stone, or do we prefer actuarial fairness where those paying into the system only agree to support selected groups.
As politicians struggle to appeal to the ideological middle, we find few were public figures willing to address these critical issues. So we find old hatchets being exhumed and sharpened again for yet another round public pandering.