Signs on to petition opposing plan to end Medicare as we know it
CEDAR RAPIDS, IA -- Rep. Bruce Braley (IA-01) today joined Jan Laue, President of the Iowa Alliance for Retired Americans, and Norm Sterzenbach, Sr., a retired electrical worker, in Cedar Rapids to stand against the Paul Ryan-Ben Lange plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program.
At the event, Braley signed on to a petition sponsored by the Alliance for Retired Americans, along with Progress Iowa and Protect Your Care, that urges elected leaders to stand against the Paul Ryan Budget that would end Medicare as we know it and privatize Social Security. The petition can be viewed and signed at http://www.protectiowaseniors.
Braley said, "We need to protect Medicare for future retirees and workers who have paid into it their whole lives. Turning Medicare into a voucher program for retirees is just not the answer. That will endanger benefits for Iowa retirees and raise Medicare costs for seniors. We can improve Medicare without ending the program as we know it."
Laue said, "Ben Lange supports the Paul Ryan plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program. By voucher-izing Medicare, the Ryan-Lange plan would endanger the future of guaranteed Medicare benefits for thousands of Iowans and jeopardize the future of the program for Iowa workers who have paid into it all their lives. This plan would raise out-of-pocket healthcare costs for thousands of Iowa seniors and retirees."
More than 500,000 Iowa seniors and retirees depend on Medicare for healthcare. The Ryan-Lange Medicare plan would make drastic changes to Medicare, rolling back guaranteed benefits for workers under age 55 and replacing the program with a voucher program.
The CBO estimates that the Ryan-Lange plan could force Medicare recipients to pay more than $1200 more out-of-pocket by 2030 and more than $5900 by 2050. Analysts say that the Ryan-Lange plan could speed up Medicare's insolvency by eight years - to 2016 from 2024.
The Alliance for Retired Americans has produced a fact sheet on the impact of the Ryan Budget on Medicare. It can be viewed at the following link: http://bit.ly/P3GCz9
Lange has been promoting Paul Ryan's ideas on the campaign trail for more than two years. In fact, his rhetoric on Medicare looks like it was taken right from the Paul Ryan playbook:
| IN THEIR OWN WORDS: BEN LANGE'S EMBRACE OF THE RYAN BUDGET | ||
| Paul Ryan Budget | Ben Lange | |
Medicare |
"For future Medicare beneficiaries who are now under 55 or younger (those who first become eligible on or after 1 January 2021), the proposal creates a standard Medicare payment to be used for the purchase of private health coverage. Currently enrolled Medicare beneficiaries and those becoming eligible in the next 10 years (i.e. turning 65 by 1 January 2021) will see no changes in the current structure of their Medicare benefits." [A Roadmap for America's Future, 01/2010] | "I think there is going to be a gradual shift in what is taking place in entitlements with Social Security and Medicare. And you are right - it hits home with me knowing my parents fast approaching that age. And they have been promised those benefits, like most Americans they have been promised those, they have paid into them over their forty years of working so let's honor that promise. But we can make a shift to the younger generation like myself because it doesn't matter if the government told us if that program is going to be there or not. We know it is fiscally not going to be there. It will not have the resources to do it." [Des Moines Register Editorial Board, 2010, 7:00] |
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