There is no way to prove that some extra-solar planet won't move through our solar system in exactly 100,000 years and hit Earth, but that's a very safe bet (and would be even if both parties would be around in 100,000 years to collect).
Hundreds of billions in public subsidies not having the effect of driving up total costs in an industry (including the cost to the provider of the subsidies, obviously costs can be decreased for the recipient) is perhaps more likely than such a specific, major, and highly unlikely event as a planetary collision in a specific year, but its also highly unlikely. Its an extreme claim. If I was playing burden of proof games, I'd say that fact requires extreme evidence. Since I'm not I'll just ask for any evidence.
The brutal fact of the matter is that, under Ryan's plan, there will be many elders who won't be able to afford the healthcare they need.
here is a good chance that the combination of reducing the total subsidy combined with injecting market forces by having recipients act more like consumers, and less like someone who has an unlimited entitlement for someone else to pay) will reduce price increases. If that actually happens then your "brutal fact" that "elders won't be able to afford" healthcare is reduced or eliminated.
If it doesn't happen, if prices are going to to continue to rapidly go up, then elders won't be able to afford healthcare any way. There is only so much the rest of the country can subsidize them, esp. when their numbers are increasing.
The alternative to vouchers or other market based mechanisms to control costs, is to simply contain the increase in spending and not spend more than a certain amount even if seniors need more than that to continue to have world class care (so your "brutal fact" applies again), or to limit payment for each specific treatment (in which case more and more doctors will opt out, game the system by how they record the conditions and what treatments they select up to full scale Medicare fraud, and/or give less time and effort and expense to each Medicare patient.
Funds are not unlimited. The increase can not be sustained. Since it can't be it won't be. Since it won't be there will be some effort to reduce costs. Market based mechanisms have the hope (but not certainty, hence the silliness of asking for proof, esp. about the future) of doing this in a way that reduces the pain of cost control. Heavy hand centralized price controls, or other non-market based limits not so much.
Also even in the worst "brutal fact" situations, the limits will represent an actual increase in spending (not just nominal dollars, or real dollars, or real dollars per capita, also real dollars per senior, real dollars per patient, and percentage of GDP). They will be getting more than they do now not less. This isn't "push Grandma off the cliff". At worst its slowing the rate of improvement in what Grandma gets. |
