I'm trying really hard to understand...

...Paul Ryan's health care reform plan. He wants to give senior citizens a $5,000 voucher to buy a private health insurance policy instead of Medicare. What I don't understand is, who are these mythical companies that are willing to write policies for seniors? You could give my 90-year-old parents a $50,000 voucher and I doubt they could find someone to write a policy (unless the insurer bet that they would die first). So the effect of his plan is to ultimately deny health care to all but the wealthiest seniors.

This would certainly help meet his goal of balancing the federal budget.

But wouldn't this be like me balancing my household budget by not buying any more of that pesky food at the grocery store?

Anyone can balance the budget by ending Medicare and Social Security. That's simple math. The difficulty is in balancing the budget while maintaining a reasonable safety net.