Paul Ryan's scheme to end Medicare is deadly

While everyone is busy talking about whether or not America will adopt the Ryan plan to end Medicare, no one has bothered to discuss in detail what would happen if Medicare did indeed disappear.

Foremost, people must look past the rhetoric. A voucher to buy private health insurance does not ‘save’ Medicare for future generations; it ends it.

Medicare is a single payer healthcare system where the government acts as a broker in establishing guidelines on what doctors and hospitals can charge for services for a segment of the population that is otherwise uninsurable. Medicare pays the health care providers and collects affordable premiums through Social Security deductions.

Now take the government away. Most elderly people have pre-existing conditions and are uninsurable. So what kind of health care system do you have left?

Here is what I believe will probably happen if the republicans win their 50 year battle to end health care through the Medicare system.

The removal of government pressure on insurance companies through standardized Medicare pricing will cause insurance rates to skyrocket. Employers struggling to cover employees now due to rising costs will be forced to drop coverage, thus adding millions to the ranks of the uninsured.

The vouchers the elderly receive from the government will not even come close to the astronomical rates insurance companies will charge them, so they will end up using the money to pay for as much medical care as they can while the money lasts. Those in assisted living facilities will be forced to move in with relatives, if they have any that will take them.

Hospitals no longer receiving guaranteed payments from the government through Medicare will refuse to treat elderly patients knowing they will not get paid.

In short, people will die at a much younger age than they would have if they had access to health care in their old age. Children born with birth defects or who develop life threatening diseases will die as well.

We have made amazing advances in medicine over the past two decades, but they will do no one any good if they don’t have the money or insurance to benefit from them.

While the concepts of what America would be like without Medicare are strictly speculation at this point, but they do need to be considered because medicine, surgery, and treatments are the difference between life and death for millions of Americans of every age.

“To senior citizens at town hall meetings angry or worried about their plan to convert Medicare to a private insurance scheme, Republicans have a simple answer: It’s not about you. You’ll be fine. This is for “the next generation,” according to The New Republic.

However, Paul Ryan has no right to decide who gets to live and who should die. But that is exactly what is he proposing by pulling the plug on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. In the real world outside of the millionaires of Capitol Hill, people who need surgery or medicine will die if they don’t have insurance or enough money to buy time for their own lives.

One might expect to see old people dying in the streets in a third world country, but not in America - until now.