Thursday, May 17, 2012

Paul Ryan wants to preserve Medicare...

...for those over the age of 55 while privatizing reforming it for everyone else. 

Why? Because, in the Congressman's own words (my emphasis): 

We're saying no changes for Medicare for people above the age of 55. And in order to keep the promise to current seniors who've already retired and organized their lives around this program, you have to reform it for the next generation. 

Make sense? 

An article on the front page of the Times this morning, "Whites Account for Under Half of Births in U. S," says (again, my emphasis): 

After years of speculation, estimates and projections, the Census Bureau has made it official: White births are no longer a majority in the United States. 

Non-Hispanic whites accounted for 49.6 percent of all births in the 12-month period that ended last July, according to Census Bureau data made public on Thursday, while minorities — including Hispanics, blacks, Asians and those of mixed race — reached 50.4 percent, representing a majority for the first time in the country’s history. 
___ 

A more diverse young population forms the basis of a generational divide with the country’s elderly, a group that is largely white and grew up in a world that was too.
___ 

Those stark statistics are made more troubling by the fact that young Americans will soon be faced with caring for the bulging population of baby boomers as they age into retirement, said William O’Hare, a senior consultant to the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore, on top of inheriting trillions of dollars of government debt. 

So, in Ryan's world, younger non-whites will be paying for the health care (and retirement) of older white people while fending for themselves in the private market (which is largely owned by those older white people). 

You don't see any potential problems with this, do you?

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