The Romney-Ryan ticket is selling 'trickle-down snake oil'

There is a terrible cynicism to Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan’s master Medicare plan. What the pair are banking on is the notion that anyone age 55 and older, who would be unaffected by it, doesn’t give a hoot about anyone 54 and younger, who would have to live with the dismantling of a system that has served the nation well for nearly five decades.

Ever since President Johnson signed Medicare into law in 1965, conservatives have hollered about how we need to rescind this landmark legislation. Your health, they say, should be in your own hands –– and the hands of private insurance companies –– not the government’s, even when you’re old.

Ryan, who is chairman of the House Budget Committee, clearly buys into the argument, and has emerged in recent years as the most forceful proponent of nixing Medicare in its current form. He wants us to move to a voucher system in which older Americans would receive coupons to pay private insurers. As a last resort, if a senior couldn’t find an insurer, he or she could stick with the government.

In an Aug. 15 speech in Des Moines, Iowa, President Obama called the Romney-Ryan plan “trickle-down snake oil.” I agree.

Over the past two weeks, Romney’s and Ryan’s surrogates have said again and again that current seniors –– who are, no doubt, the most politically savvy and active of Americans — needn’t worry. They will continue to enjoy the promise of government-insured health care until they die. So they shouldn’t get up in arms when the Romney-Ryan campaign says Medicare as we know it must go.

But what does this say to a guy like me, age 45? My parents receive Medicare benefits. Does the Romney-Ryan campaign believe that the older generation is guided only by self-interest –– that the 55-and-older crowd doesn’t care whether my generation and their grandchildren’s generation would be entitled to the same benefits that they’ve enjoyed under Medicare? Do Romney and Ryan really believe that older Americans are willing to hand the rest of us over to private insurers, whose primary reason for existence is to make money for company shareholders?

I hope they don’t, but their campaign is clearly led not by personal conviction, but by big-money interests.