Altering Entitlements Could Emerge as 2012 Issue

Reconfiguring Medicare could be a big issue in next year’s election campaign.

Earlier this year, House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, put forward a budget plan that included a fundamental change for the health care plan for the nation’s elderly. Ryan’s plan, according to the Congressional Budget Office, would change Medicare into a system of premium support payments. It would increase the age of eligibility for Medicare.

The CBO report continued that people who turn 65 in 2022 “would not enroll in the current Medicare program but instead would be entitled to a premium support payment to help them purchase private health insurance.” The plan would not affect anybody who is currently 55 years or older.

Ryan’s Medicare proposal has been used a bludgeoning tool for Democrats of late. For example, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee sent out an e-mail this week asking U.S. Rep. Todd Akin and former state Treasurer Sarah Steelman to take the Medicare plan "off the table" in negotiations to raise the nation’s debt ceiling. Both Akin and Steelman are running for U.S. Senate.

And U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan – a St. Louis City Democrat who represents Oakville in the U.S. Congress – said in a statement earlier this year that Ryan’s budgetary plan is an “irresponsible proposal that will hurt seniors, families, and businesses, and will endanger our fragile economic recovery.”

Carnahan , a district that will encompass Oakville. Two announced Republican candidates have sounded off on the future of the entitlement program.

Ed Martin, for instance, told Lee Presser that the country is going to have a serious conversation about the program operates in the future.

“I don’t expect to get it the same way it is for my parents,” Martin told Presser, who added he doesn’t expect Social Security to be the same either. “We should go and talk about the future of Medicare in a way that has Medicare Advantage, the actual system where you can control what you get in your health and wellness.”

“My wife’s a physician and she works in geriatrics,” Martin added. “She told me that Medicare and Medicaid are not good enough care and they are way too expensive.”

Ann Wagner, a former chairwoman of the Missouri Republican Party who also announced a run for the 2nd District seat, told KMOX’s Mark Reardon in late April that the “Republican leadership and Paul Ryan are some of the only leaders in Washington, DC right now.”

“Paul Ryan, who is thoughtful in this process, is looking at cutting trillions and trillions of dollars from what is a $14 trillion debt,” Wagner said. “And he’s having an adult conversation on spending cuttings, on balanced budget amendments, on reducing our tax level and closing loopholes, and looking at entitlement reform also.”

Medicare may not be the only entitlement program that becomes an issue next year.

Lake Research Partners – a Washington, D.C. polling firm that primarily serves Democratic candidates and interest groups – commissioned a poll for a group called Social Security Works. It found that respondents opposed raising the retirement age for the program or reducing the amount beneficiaries receive.

“This poll shows that voters are clear in their thinking: Don’t cut Social Security benefits, don’t reduce the COLA and don’t raise the retirement age,” said Max Richtman, acting CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, in a statement.

The poll found respondents supported requiring employers and employees to pay Social Security taxes on wages about $106,800. Carnahan spokesman Sam Drzymala said the congressman supports lifting that cap.