Cue The Clown Car...

Ryan releases his Medicare/Medicaid plan.

So, as I was saying all the way back in time yesterday, the GOP - given the opportunity to address long term costs in Medicare and Medicaid - decided to go full retard.

Paul Ryan's plan is cynical and ineffectual.  He basically has decided to end Medicare for anyone under 55 and replace it with - let's pause for the irony here - Obamacare.  It would be a system of subsidies that eliminate the single payer, worker subsidized plan we have now with private plans.

Because private plans work so freaking well at keeping costs down.

The problem has always been that most of your medical expenses will occur around the time you die.  And you will die once you get on Medicare.  Ryan's plan will force people to cover additional medical expenses - ie end of life care - from their own pocket.

Or to put it another way, the grinding poverty that typified old age prior to Social Security and Medicare is coming back if the GOP have their way.

And these are the bastards who ran on "death panels"?

TPM has a run down on the plan here.

This is Social Security privatization all over again.  This is bowing down to the Free Market Fairy again.

And if the Democrats don't demagogue the living hell out of the GOP on this, they deserve to lose the next election.

I always said that Republicans were good at politics and lousy at policy.  This is bad at both.

I'd say it was unbelievable, but it's harder to be stunned by anything the GOP Tea Party is doing these days.

UPDATE: The always wonkiriffic Ezra Klein looks at it here.  Basically, the GOP achieves health care reform by not paying for health care.  Wow!  Problem solved, thanks Paul Ryan.  I hear he has a similar plan for world peace whereby we no one goes to war.