Responding to Ryan

Let me begin by saying that though I’m eager to do an interview where we can really engage with one another’s arguments, I appreciate Paul Ryan response to my questions and hope we can continue the dialogue. In this post, I’m going to focus on his two most important arguments: the one for why his plan will work, and the one for why other plans failed. The first argument can be summed up as “look at Medicare Part D,” the second as “look at the rest of the world.”

”Our premium-support plan is modeled after the Medicare Part D prescription-drug program,” Ryan writes, “in which providers compete against each other for seniors’ business. Medicare Part D came in 40 percent below cost projections done at the time of enactment — that’s almost unheard of for a government program.”