Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna

Thanks for posting this, Bucco. It presents some statistics that people who just blindly embrace the Ryan proposal almost certainly don't know.

And it matches my own personal experience with healthcare premiums. A long, long time ago the bank I worked for in Chicago announced that it would generously and finally fund the healthcare insurance for retirees with monthly additions to their retirement payments amounting to $300 per month. The bank would then stop paying the retiree healthcare premiums, avoiding the future risk of increasing preiums from the insurance companies. At the time, the monthly premiums were about $175. It sounded like a generous offer at the time. The premiums increased to more than that amount within 3-4 years. By the time I retired early, I was paying over $1,000 a month until I turned 65 and qualified for Medicare. And now I pay a multiple of that amount for a supplemental policy.

The Ryan voucher program is a terrible idea. I hope enough people read enough to realize that rather than just voting the way their partisan "soundbite-makers" or the political attack ads tell them to. But even if they don't I can't imagine that this plan will ever see the light of day in a Congress concentrated on re-election. A voucher program really would be a politically-fatal "third rail".

Now let the criticisms of the "left leaning Congressional Budget Office" begin.