Capital Times Excerpt: (Mike Ivey)
With drumbeating protestors outside the Fluno Center providing background noise throughout, Rep. Paul Ryan delivered his Medicare reform pitch to a UW-Madison real estate conference Thursday and came off sounding almost like a progressive.
During a panel discussion on budget and policy reforms, Ryan called for directing public health care spending toward "those who need it the most, the poor and sick."
Ryan's slant to directing public health care spending toward those who need it the most, "the poor and sick" was strictly word pandering to outraged religious leaders who have called his "path" an abomination to Christianity. Ryan knows it might play well enough to get them off his back.
Ryan's words have to be dissected carefully. For instance, future "public health care spending" in his view is not Medicare - it's Medicaid only. Remember, under Ryan's plan, Medicare will be privatized. Medicaid currently exists for the "poor sick" without Ryan pretending like his plan reforms something anew. The only truth to Ryan's statement is that if he gets his way with Medicare - the government will have no choice but to direct more spending to (unfunded) public health care (Medicaid), but it won't be like it happened because his Catholic compassion calls for it, instead it's because his cold-hearted proposal strips all compassion away from everything else it touches. His proposal turns compassion-heavy Medicaid over to the states in a Block Grant, where every Randian Wall Street politician wants it to go.
Even if we'd like to use his own words to expose a hint of betrayal in his repellent and ugly ideological doctrine, Ryan's no fool but he's no Progressive either. Not even close.
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