GOP budget would restructure Medicare

The latest budget to emerge from the Republican-led House includes a staggering $6.2 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade, and if Republicans had their way, Medicare and Medicaid, along with other entitlement programs, would be completely overhauled.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin told “Fox News Sunday With Chris Wallace” that the budget would be unveiled in the coming week. Ryan’s long-term plan to combat the budget deficit is already drawing the ire of Democrats, who have criticized the impact such cuts will have on seniors and children.

Last year’s proposal by Ryan, called the “roadmap for reform,” may indicate the broader strokes of the House budget plan. The roadmap called for capping federal taxes at 19 percent of GDP product and allowing seniors the option of putting Social Security savings into private retirement accounts.

But a centerpiece of the proposal is a dramatic restructuring of Medicare and Medicaid. This would involve converting the current system, in which the government makes payments to health care providers on behalf of beneficiaries, to one in which beneficiaries receive vouchers to help pay for care or, as Ryan prefers to call it, “premium support.”