If ever there was bad idea whose time never came, it is Paul Ryan's plan to slash Medicaid spending and convert what remains into a system of block grants administered by the states. The $300 billion federal-state program providing health care for millions of poor, elderly and disabled Americans faces a triple whammy from the […]

"We want to save Medicare," a senior GOP aide put it, "while Democrats would let it die." Sadly for him, it appears that Republicans spouting that talking point are about to be mugged by reality. For starters, recent polling shows the American people are overwhelmingly opposed to the Ryan plan to privatize and ration the […]

The growing backlash against their plan to end the Medicare guaranteed government insurance program for 46 million Americans is producing near-panic in Republican ranks. With polls showing overwhelming opposition to the Ryan rationing scheme, House GOP leaders begged President Obama to stop the "demagoguery" about their reckless privatization scheme even as Republicans tried and failed […]

After their debacle in the New York special election last week, Republicans promised to improve the marketing of Paul Ryan's plan to privatize and ration Medicare. We now know what that new and improved message will be. As one Republican aide regurgitated the new GOP sound bite, "We want to save Medicare, while Democrats would […]

In figure skating, gymnastics, skateboarding and other sports, performing a720-degree, double-rotation is not for the faint of heart. When it comes to their plan to end the Medicare system of guaranteed insurance for 46 million Americans, Republicans attempting the rare 720 are learning that the hard way. After all, in just two short years, members […]

"People have access to health care in America," George W. Bush declared in 2007, adding, "After all, you just go to an emergency room." But with a new report from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) showing a steep decline in emergency room capacity nationwide, the ER health care solution championed by President […]

On Friday, Medicare's board of trustees announced that the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010 has added eight years of solvency to the health care program serving 46 million American seniors. That news capped a week of political irony involving Medicare. After freshmen House Republicans complained to President Obama about the backlash over their vote […]

If you were wondering what impact the Paul Ryan budget passed last month by all but four House Republicans will have on American health care, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Urban Institute have your answer. If enacted, the GOP repeal of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) combined with the conversion of Medicaid into […]

This week, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) admitted that the Republican effort to repeal the 2010 health care law is "dead." But while all eyes are now focused on the lawsuit by 26 states to overturn the law and its individual insurance mandate, hundreds of thousands of Americans are already getting […]

Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Minnesota Representative and would-be 2012 GOP White House hopeful Michele Bachmann announced she was placing an "asterisk" next to her vote for the Paul Ryan budget plan to end Medicare as we know it. Given her usual hyperbole, such as her warning this week that the federal tax burden now […]