We've all heard about the financial disaster that awaits seniors if we are unfortunate enough to give Paul Ryan the opportunity to inflict his vision of American on the country. Instead of signing up for our most efficient and popular health care program when you turn 65, you will instead be handed a voucher or coupon or whatever you want to call it, valued at $6000 a year in today's dollars to pay for private insurance on the open market.
It's bad enough that $6000 won't pay for much of a policy and it's bad enough that most seniors have pre-existing conditions as defined by insurance companies, and it's bad enough that if Ryan and Romney are elected, they will do their best to eliminate the protection that people with those pre-existing conditions would have under the Affordable Care Act, but there is an aspect of his plan that is even worse.
I am presently taking care of my mother (88) and my mother-in-law (89) and if I weren't there to do their finances, answer their mail, weed through the difficult legal language of a basic credit card argeement and explain it to them, they would, frankly, be lost. Not just in understanding basic information, but they would be sitting ducks to people who want to confuse them and take their money. I bet many of you know exactly what I'm talking about.
The REAL disaster of the Ryan plan isn't so much of a financial disaster as it is a human disaster. His plan forces millions of people at age 65, 70, 75, 80 and older, most who have never purchased health insurance in their lives, to fend for themselves and go shopping for it on the open market. AND they have to stay on top of their complicated plan to make sure it stays up with their needs....all while they grow older and even simple details become more difficult to retain.
For instance, my father, during the two years before he passed away, couldn't remember what insurance was, let alone shop for it.
Paul Ryan's plan is a financial disaster for seniors, but it doesn't come close to the human toll it will have on those who need simplicity and protected coverage the most.
Ryan and Romney and the entire GOP should be ashamed, but that would imply that they are capable of shame.