Paul Ryan's Medicare Voucher Plan

I am skeptical of Paul Ryan's proposal to privatize Medicare for those Americans born in 1957 and later. He advocates the tying of the health care vouchers to the CPI inflation rate, not to the health care sector's inflation rate. (Obviously, health care inflation exceeds CPI inflation.) The health care costs will accelerate even faster with the baby boomers getting older and unhealthier.

The Republican party is beholden to the insurance industry.  Ryan's plan will simply pour more taxpayer's money into the pockets of insurance company execs. Unfortunately, both Social Security and Medicare are based on a Ponzi scheme. When the baby boomers were young, our socialist government benefited from the huge payroll taxes generated from them; now with this cohort getting older and close to retirement, the government wants to dump them into the private sector.

I am, however, a fan of health care savings accounts. I believe that the purpose of insurance is for catastrophe, not for routine care. It doesn't make sense for a third party (i.e. the insurance company) to stand in the way between the patient and the family doctor. For my annual physicals, I much prefer paying the doctor directly, out of my own pocket.

A good link for you to read is the essay "How American Health Care Killed my Father" by David Goldhill in the Atlantic magazine (September 2009).