{"id":16220,"date":"2012-03-20T16:46:54","date_gmt":"2012-03-20T16:46:54","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2012-03-20T16:46:54","modified_gmt":"2012-03-20T16:46:54","slug":"the_regime_that_rations_care_for_the_elderly_has_the_audacity_to_say_ryan_s_plan_will_send_medicare_into_a_death_spiral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2012\/03\/20\/the_regime_that_rations_care_for_the_elderly_has_the_audacity_to_say_ryan_s_plan_will_send_medicare_into_a_death_spiral\/","title":{"rendered":"The Regime That Rations Care for the Elderly Has the Audacity to Say Ryan\u2019s Plan Will Send Medicare into a “Death Spiral”"},"content":{"rendered":"

RUSH: Here\u2019s one more Paul Ryan <\/a>soundbite on the whole Medicare thing, and here he is pointing out who\u2019s really cut it. Obama has cut Medicare! That\u2019s fundamental. That was part of Obamacare. It was how they got the price tag under $1 trillion.<\/p>\n

RYAN: The president\u2019s health care law does that already. The president\u2019s health care law puts 15 bureaucrats in charge of rationing the program, and he raids over half a trillion dollars from the program to spend on other government programs. We preserve the benefit for people in and near retirement. The president doesn\u2019t do that. But in order to do that you have to reform the program to save the program and prevent it from going bankrupt. That\u2019s what we do. Scare tactics I don\u2019t think are gonna work. The country wants to be spoken to like adults, not pandered to like children. We owe the country a choice. We owe them leadership, we think. And if you want to save Medicare and prevent it from going bankrupt, you must reform the program.<\/line><\/p>\n

RUSH: That was Paul Ryan this morning on CBS This Morning with Charlie Rose. <\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: I don\u2019t want to spend a whole lot of more time on the budget. I just want to make a couple of points and move on. Every one of you are totally up to speed on this: $100 billion — $100,000 million<\/a> — is .006% of our national debt, $15.5 trillion. Six one-thousandths of a percent, folks. (Or is it six one-hundredths? I always get confused with the decimal point and the figure to the right of it.) That\u2019s infinitesimal. It\u2019s a thimbleful compared to the national debt. Another way to illustrate size of the national debt and put it in perspective is to remember that for the first time in our history, the national debt is now larger than the entire economy. <\/p>\n

We owe more than the annual economic output of this country. Of everything that generates economic output — revenue, money, whatever — we owe more than the entire economy of this country. That has never happened. Well, in the modern era it hasn\u2019t happened. And, of course, the one-party media is already aligned against Paul Ryan. We have an irresponsible, nonexistent budget from the Democrat Party. The only budget we get from them is Obama\u2019s. It\u2019s not even serious. The Democrats in the House and Senate don\u2019t present a budget. They don\u2019t dare. They don\u2019t want people to see what their spending plans are. <\/p>\n

So they leave it up to the Republicans to put a responsible budget out and thus become the only target. There\u2019s only one budget to shoot at! Obama\u2019s isn\u2019t real. Nobody believes that it is. The Republican budget is real, and it becomes the target that everybody else starts shooting down. And this Jay Carney <\/a>sound bite from yesterday afternoon? We spent a lot of time trying to figure out just why that Washington Post story on Sunday, pointing out how Obama lied in a national address to the people of this country about the debt deal last summer. The Republicans did compromise. They did work with him. They gave him some tax increases. <\/line><\/p>\n

And that scared him off.<\/p>\n

He wanted to run against a “do-nothing Congress.” <\/p>\n

So we\u2019re living in this false notion that there\u2019s an economic recovery going on, and Carney was asked yesterday (paraphrased exchange), “Is this inevitable that we\u2019re gonna keep going now and recover? Is that inevitable? Nothing can stop us now? This recovery is solid?” And Carney said, “Oh, no, no! The Republican Congress could screw us again just like they did last summer.” Utter irresponsibility from this administration. And here are a couple sound bites of this regime reacting to Paul Ryan\u2019s budget. This is Gene Sperling. He\u2019s the National Economic Council director. He was on Scarborough\u2019s show today, and he was asked for his reaction to the Paul Ryan budget.<\/p>\n

SPERLING: What I find most disturbing, it takes this basic Medicare guarantee and essentially creates a two-tier system in which people in health care plans have a fundamental economic incentive to try to siphon off the healthiest and youngest workers, thereby raising costs more for people who want to stay in Medicare. That drives more people out of Medicare, making the cost even higher for those who remain. So this process risks creating an actual death spiral for the basic guarantee of Medicare as more people are forced out of the system and those who remain face higher and higher costs.<\/line><\/p>\n

RUSH: I honestly do not know how to deal with this as a responsible man. This… (sighs) It is Obama who has threatened Medicare. It\u2019s Obama who cut Medicare. It is Obama who is seeing to it that health care costs are skyrocketing. We just had the news last week that the actual cost of Obamacare is gonna be double what the original projection was, and this guy dares to go out and say this? They\u2019re playing class warfare again? The Ryan budget? Yep, that\u2019s what they need. Democrats are gonna use the Ryan plan to gin up their class warfare again. Yep, that\u2019s right! “Republicans are gonna take your Medicare away from you! Republicans gonna take your benefits away from you. Because all the Republicans care about is the 1%. The Republicans threw Medicare into a death spiral!”<\/p>\n

It is Obama who has the death panels. It is Obamacare which would allow the Secretary of Health and Human Services to “determine” who gets treated and for what, and how extensively. If we do nothing, Medicare is going to completely fail, just like if we don\u2019t nothing the same thing will happen to Social Security. You\u2019ve got one… I wouldn\u2019t even say a full party, but at least Paul Ryan and his budgeteers (as in “The Three Musketeers”) are tackling this seriously and responsibly. He\u2019s gonna get killed for it. He\u2019s gonna get decapitated for it. They\u2019re gonna set out to destroy him, the people of compassion and understanding who want the best for everybody. It appears they\u2019re just against anything that will bring responsibility back to the finances of this country. So Scarborough asks Gene Sperling after that rambling bunch of BS as an answer, “Well, is your position then, Mr. Sperling, the White House position? Medicare will survive over the next 20, 25 years. Save Medicare for next 20 years?”<\/p>\n

SPERLING: You know, you can say that it\u2019s unfair to say the death spiral phrase, but it really refers to something in economics that I think you understand: That if you put everybody in one common insurance pool, and then you allow people to siphon off those who are healthiest and youngest, those who remain in Medicare, instead of being part of — of a large pool of — of seniors, are now just the sickest and the oldest. Of course that means their costs are gonna go up. Creating a two-tiered system does create a serious risk of a death spiral that undermines the basic affordability of Medicare that we have today.<\/p>\n

RUSH: The audacity of these people. They are clearly relying on the fact that 95% of the people will not know what the hell he\u2019s talking about, and they\u2019re just gonna accept it. So to help people understand, I want to go back to June 24th of 2009. ABC did a prime-time special: Questions for the President, Prescription for America. And in this special a woman stood up and asked the president of the United States if he would allow her elderly mother to basically live once she needed a pacemaker. Stop and think about that — just that — for a second. A citizen of this country goes to the White House for an ABC network TV special, stands up and asks the president if he and his government will allow her mother to survive. And the president said no. <\/p>\n

The woman talked about her mother\u2019s will to live, her spark, her energy. <\/p>\n

Obama says, we can\u2019t take that into account. <\/line>