Romney Wants to Voucherize Medicare

Paul Ryan's 2013 budget replaces Medicare's guaranteed benefits with a "premium support" payment that beneficiaries would use towards the cost of private insurance or traditional Medicare starting in 2023. The amount of this voucher would be based on the second cheapest available plan in the area. There is no guarantee that this payment would actually cover enough of a premium's cost to actually make health care affordable. In fact, it is more than likely that beneficiaries would be left with increased out of pocket costs, because Ryan's plan caps the amount of the voucher at GDP + 0.5 percent, far below the growth in health insurance costs in recent years. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that new beneficiaries could pay more than $1,200 more by 2030 and more than $5,900 more by 2050 under this scenario.

Source: Alliance for Retired Americans