Regarding “Reform law is biggest threat to Medicare, Ryan says”:

I am always at a loss to understand why any payer would willingly take on a higher utilization population like Medicare recipients without charging much higher rates than they do for their diluted risk-covered lives. The premium-support model just seems ludicrous at the outset because of this.

The conversation about how to sustain Medicare is moving well along—a fact unacknowledged by those fervently preaching growth-killing austerity—and sooner or later, payments will be bundled, fraud will be reduced and care providers will find efficiencies based on the invisible hand of reimbursement pressures. The misrepresented issue about the $716 billion should have been addressed by the journalist and won’t survive the election season. Independent voters—the ones Romney/Ryan really need to be appealing to—are not as open to the trickery that their far-right base appears to be. Ryan is suggesting we have to kill traditional Medicare to save it? Who buys this?

David Troland
Chicago