Davis Enterprise - Thompson takes aim at GOP Medicare proposal'

Speaking with senior citizens across his district, Rep. Mike Thompson warned Wednesday that Medicare is “under attack” by Republicans.

Thompson, D-St. Helena, joined President Obama and other Democrats who have made a lightning rod of Rep. Paul Ryan's budget proposal. The Wisconsin Republican's plan includes transforming Medicare into a competitive market for people now younger than 55.

“You've got one side trying to wipe out Medicare and the other side trying to preserve Medicare,” Thompson said at one point during his latest telephone town hall meeting.

He described Ryan's proposal as “a (plan) that would … force seniors into the private insurance market and make them shop for coverage with a government voucher.”

“This is the way it was before 1965, when Medicare was passed, and it didn't work,” Thompson added. “That's why Medicare was passed â€" because seniors couldn't afford to purchase their health care in the marketplace.”

Starting in 2022, under Ryan's plan, new beneficiaries would pick a health insurance plan from competing private insurers instead of from the government. The government would offer subsidies to pay for the coverage and set standards that insurers must follow.

Critics have said the plan would shift the cost from the government to retirees.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the government would pay 32 percent of health care costs, less than half of what it currently pays, by 2030. Retirees would pay the rest. Under the current Medicare system, the government would pay 70 to 75 percent of costs.

Thompson said Congress should instead “continue to build on the health care reforms we passed last year.”

“We need to make sure that we make improvements that bend down the cost of health care,” he said.

Thompson did not offer ways to do that, but said he believed the law's provisions would benefit Medicare.

He specifically cited: funding for electronic health records, which also could reduce medical errors; health screenings and a greater focus on preventive care; and coordinated care between providers, which he said will “better focus health care on the individual rather than figure out what's reimbursable.”

“When these new programs come online, the ones that work will be expanded and the ones that don't work will be jettisoned,” Thompson said. “As they expand, you'll see more savings coming about.

“That's a very, very stark contrast to what the majority's plan (does), the Ryan plan does, by just destroying Medicare. That doesn't serve anyone well. … It will make health care for everybody more expensive.”

After a meeting at the White House on Wednesday, Ryan said he believed Obama was urging Democrats to turn up the heat on the Medicare plan, instead of offering specific spending cuts of his own.

“I just said we've got to take on this debt and if we demagogue each other at the leadership level then we're never gonna take on our debt,” Ryan told reporters after the meeting.

The meeting was held ahead of an Aug. 2 deadline for the federal government to raise the federal debt limit or go into unprecedented default. Republicans want spending cuts attached to any measure raising the limit.

“They're really playing a foolish game of chicken on this,” said Thompson, who favors raising the debt limit. “We need to balance the budget, we need to reduce the deficit, but we need to do it in a fiscally smart way, not a way that breaks the bank and causes chaos.”

A Davis caller suggested reducing spending by removing troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. Thompson, who has called for both, agreed.

More than one caller bemoaned the lack of a cost-of-living increase in Social Security for two years.

A 0.7 percent increase is expected next year, though Thompson and Nora Super, AARP's director of federal government affairs, who joined him on the call, said they're concerned that higher fuel costs or higher Medicare Part B premiums will wipe it out.

Unlike Ryan and others, Thompson said he was confident of the strength of Social Security. He cited an estimate that the program will be able to pay out 100 percent of benefits until 2037.

Proposals to improve its finances have included raising the retirement age, the amount of maximum taxable earnings or a combination of the two.

Thompson didn't say where he fell on the question, except to say, “It's not something that needs to be dealt with right away,” adding, “I don't see it as an insurmountable problem.”

The congressman's office said that 16,289 people listened in on the conference call. About 40,000 seniors in his district were auto-dialed.