purple

Ricky: I have no proof, though I suppose it wouldn't be impossible to dig up old surveys if you had all the resources.

I have very few resources, but I dug this up.
http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/ ... ough-mitt/

I think you'll be surprised to find that it contradicts your impression. Perhaps time has a way of redefining the perceptions ?
from the article, in which there is a link to the detailed study the author was responsible for, and from which he quotes...

Jimmy Carter’s 1980 job approval was flirting with lows established by Harry S. Truman, Nixon and later, George W. Bush, but the electorate rated Carter’s personal qualities as the highest of the Democratic candidates between 1952 and 2000. The same electorate rated Ronald Reagan as the lowest of the Republican candidates. The Ronald Reagan of October 1980 was not the Reagan of “morning again in America” in 1984, let alone the beloved focus of national mourning in 2004. Many Americans saw the 1980 Reagan as uninformed, reckless, and given to gaffes and wild claims. But despite their misgivings about Reagan, and their view that Carter was a peach of a guy personally, voters opted against four more years of Carter.

ray

Although not Purple, I am purple and find it disgusting how each party and their supporters attempt to paint any pick from the other side as extremist. The Democratic attack on Ryan is now at a feverish pace; they are trying to define the man as an extremist before the vast majority of the electorate can meet the man and find out who he is. (Both parties do this, and it is a real disservice to the voters, those people who they claim to represent.)

The question is are his policy positions viewed as extreme?
Your right that there are those who simply rant and roar throwing labels about, with no substantive evidence to back up their claims ... ... "Obama is a socialist"... and they are allowed air time on major American news networks to expound their nonsense. ...
But is it wrong to point to an espoused policy and ask, "Isn't that a little out of the main stream? Isn't that an extreme view?"
Ryans idea of vouchers for Medicare comes to mind as one area where he has proposed something that I believe most Americans will find to be an extreme renovation of Meicare....
Ryans budget, which I guess Mitt will not directly espouse or publicly support because many elements of it are unpopular is a legitimate target. And it was rather extreme, though its effect on the deficit was predicted to be negligible even by ryan. (Not balanced till 2040.)

rickyp wrote:...I dug this up.
http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/ ... ough-mitt/

I think you'll be surprised to find that it contradicts your impression.

I don't think the evidence there is all that convincing but to argue the point would be a long and boring process. I'd have to download, unzip, organize and analyze a dozen separate data files in ASCII format. Then we'd argue about the difference between the two questions I mentioned and the "all personal characteristics" your study looked at. I'd rather concede the point. You did find a rather on-point study to refute my gut feeling, and it was done by two professors. Good enough. Ricky shoots... he scores!!!

rickyp wrote:ray

Although not Purple, I am purple and find it disgusting how each party and their supporters attempt to paint any pick from the other side as extremist. The Democratic attack on Ryan is now at a feverish pace; they are trying to define the man as an extremist before the vast majority of the electorate can meet the man and find out who he is. (Both parties do this, and it is a real disservice to the voters, those people who they claim to represent.)

The question is are his policy positions viewed as extreme?
Your right that there are those who simply rant and roar throwing labels about, with no substantive evidence to back up their claims ... ... "Obama is a socialist"... and they are allowed air time on major American news networks to expound their nonsense. ...
But is it wrong to point to an espoused policy and ask, "Isn't that a little out of the main stream? Isn't that an extreme view?"
Ryans idea of vouchers for Medicare comes to mind as one area where he has proposed something that I believe most Americans will find to be an extreme renovation of Meicare....
Ryans budget, which I guess Mitt will not directly espouse or publicly support because many elements of it are unpopular is a legitimate target. And it was rather extreme, though its effect on the deficit was predicted to be negligible even by ryan. (Not balanced till 2040.)

The question is whether his policy positions are extreme, not whether they are viewed as extreme. The problem is that the media is asking me to view them as extreme without my really knowing whether they are. His views on medicare are being labeled extreme, but I haven't seen proof that they are extreme. And the problems of medicare are extreme -- they threaten the Republic as we know it -- so perhaps extreme solutions are needed, and stay the course represents ignoring an extreme problem. I don't know -- I'm just saying that we get the label without my having comfort that we get the facts.

I live in a liberal place; most of my friends will tell me that Ryan is extreme, but none of them will really know the true economics of his proposal. I'll have to do the research. Stay tuned.

ray

The question is whether his policy positions are extreme, not whether they are viewed as extreme.

Objective truth? In an election in the United States?

All that matters is how the electorate ends up viewing his policies.
Objectively Obama is not a Muslim. And yet 24% of Americans beleive he is. (whatever the most recent poll is.....) . For that 24 % he is Muslim, objective truth be damned.
Conservatives railing about the importance of objective truth now, is a little dear.

His views on medicare are being labeled extreme, but I haven't seen proof that they are extreme. And the problems of medicare are extreme -- they threaten the Republic as we know it -- so perhaps extreme solutions are needed, and stay the course represents ignoring an extreme problem.

Granted.
A voucher system, that he proposed, would place the burden of increasing health care costs on the individual who's medical costs exceed the voucher. That seems rather an extreme solution when there are existing systems around the world that demonstrate solutions that both reduce over all medical costs, and insure people for all their costs, no matter how high they go...
To me, reaching for a solution that offers no real cure for high costs, and yet burdens the aging people even more as they enter retirement is extreme. But thats because I view European solutions in these areas as the norm.
And the objective truth is that the European solutions are less expensive and more effective.

Well, Ryan does have some... interesting... positions and opinions. Not sure he's 'extreme', but his budget plan and his previous attempt to 'privatise' social security did raise a lot of hackles (the latter, by the way would have cost a couple of trillion for the first ten years and was described by the BushII administration as irresponsible!).

I'm sure that the rhetoric will be to demonise Ryan, his plan, and Romney for picking him/it. And on the obverse, the rhetoric will be similar to bbauska's - that Obama and the Democrats don't want to do anything about debt or deficits at all. It's a function of your two-party system and political culture that you get periods like this when any opponent has to be made out to be a total threat.

Which does make me wonder why take the risk of picking Ryan at all? Beforehand, Romney was able to prevaricate about what his fiscal policy was, and moved from appearing to back the Ryan Plan to putting some distance. The Dems would love to have been able to link Romney to the replacement of Medicare with vouchers, and now they can. Not sure why not a Rubio or a Jindal or someone a bit more Southern with some more clear social conservative positions. I realise that the economy and the budget are major issues, but to be associated with a particular policy is risky.

But surely Romney could have guessed that Ryan would attract fierce opposition? It's not like he's some unknown first term governor.

Ricky:

A voucher system, that he proposed, would place the burden of increasing health care costs on the individual who's medical costs exceed the voucher. That seems rather an extreme solution when there are existing systems around the world that demonstrate solutions that both reduce over all medical costs, and insure people for all their costs, no matter how high they go...
To me, reaching for a solution that offers no real cure for high costs, and yet burdens the aging people even more as they enter retirement is extreme. But thats because I view European solutions in these areas as the norm.
And the objective truth is that the European solutions are less expensive and more effective.

However, Obama isn't running on reforming our health care system, so a European type solution is not something that the American electorate can vote for. Therefore, my choice is between a party that has no plan to reform medicare or medicaid, and a party that does. With ACA, all of the projections continue to show that US health care will cost at least 50% more than other western countries. If we do nothing, then our debt and deficit increase substantially, and there is not a plan being offered that will reduce it relative to the existing medicare and medicaid promises. The cost curve has not been bent downard. So, I'm not convinced that Ryan is the extremist. Looking back 20 years from now, we may find that doing nothing will result in more extreme negative changes then dealing with the issue now.

Anyway, that's the point. I think it is great that Romney by choosing Ryan, is tackling it head on. I'd like to better understand the specifics of Ryan's plan before opining whether it is a workable solution. But I do like when people running for President propose solutions.

The problem with Ryan's voucher plan seems to be that it passes the problem on (from the 'taxpayer' to retirees), because if healthcare costs continue to rise at current rates, the vouchers will increasingly fall short of the full costs for many people. How does the voucher scheme alter the overall 'cost curve', as opposed to the Federal one (after all, if the fiscal situation is fixed but at the cost of the wider economy, it's not that great a solution)?

I can see that people under 56 who have been working and paying payroll taxes for up to 38 years, supporting current Medicare costs will think that this will be bilking them.

A lot of the increased costs projected are related to the baby boom bulge in a particular cohort of the population, one which will, withing a couple of decades, be pretty much gone. But the next generations, with a flatter growth profile, will end up 'paying' for it.

The rest of the increased costs will, of course, be down to improved treatments, longevity, the principle of proloinging life, etc. I'm not sure how Ryan's plan addresses that at all - and that is where I would expect 'reforms' woudl have to focus to deal with the projected problems.

There is another factor. The issue seems to be that to fix the economy now, we need to deal with a debt problem that 'is projected to arrive' in a couple of decades's or so's time. Problem is, I'm not sure how it can have a retroactive effect. Do businesses and households really plan on the basis of changes that take effect in the 2020s? Aren't they more likely to be looking at the medium term at the very least?

danivon wrote:The problem with Ryan's voucher system . . .

The problem with calling it a "voucher system" is that it's not. It also does NOTHING to current seniors (unlike the Democrats' claim that it "ends Medicare as we know it."). More here. Go to the END for the latest iteration of the bipartisan Ryan-Wyden plan

Beyond characterizing his plan as a Medicare Apocalypse, Ryan’s critics expressed a financial fear: That his subsidies, indexed to inflation, would grow too slowly, leaving seniors unable to afford health care and without a safety net if costs grew faster than inflation. The Ryan/Wyden plan made major changes to address that criticism, including a catastrophic-care benefit to limit out-of-pocket costs and another significant shift in indexing premium-support payments to the cost of available insurance plans.
While Ryan’s updated Medicare plan is drastically different from his previous one in many significant regards, it is clear nonetheless that Democrats want voters to judge him on the version on which he first staked his career–the one in which Ryan proposes ending Medicare as we know it with the goal of saving America’s entitlements from bankruptcy.

Medicare is heading for bankruptcy. The President's solution is to cut funding for it in exchange for "reducing fraud, waste and abuse." Does anyone believe that promise? How many others make the same vow and nothing changes?

Something has to be done.

Ryan wants to solve the problem.

Democrats want to demagogue.

Let the voters decide which they want: solutions or scaremongering. Explanations of potential solutions or videos of someone who looks like Ryan throwing a grandmother over a cliff? Serious proposals or the pretense that "taxing the rich" is a solution for our fiscal ills?

I can see that people under 56 who have been working and paying payroll taxes for up to 38 years, supporting current Medicare costs will think that this will be bilking them.

I am, I have, I don't.

The current system, no matter what anyone says, is unsustainable. The President's failure to lead on the issue is, in light of his leadership style, not surprising, but it is also unsustainable. We can't afford him.

Note to rickyp: please don't launch a tirade about the glories of socialized medicine here.

A lot of the increased costs projected are related to the baby boom bulge in a particular cohort of the population, one which will, withing a couple of decades, be pretty much gone. But the next generations, with a flatter growth profile, will end up 'paying' for it.

Right, so the question is do we now, especially in light of the longer life expectancy we now enjoy, take some modest measures to reduce the burden on our future generations or do we just send them the bill? I care more about them than some minor inconveniences.

However, Democrats are framing this as "killing grandma" because they not only have no plan, they actually enjoy the every increasing debt because they want to enslave as many people as possible. That's what it is: work, work, work, then give more and more of the fruits of your labor to the State. After all, who knows better what to do with our money than DC?

There is another factor. The issue seems to be that to fix the economy now, we need to deal with a debt problem that 'is projected to arrive' in a couple of decades's or so's time. Problem is, I'm not sure how it can have a retroactive effect. Do businesses and households really plan on the basis of changes that take effect in the 2020s? Aren't they more likely to be looking at the medium term at the very least?

Sure, so what are they looking at?

Answer: higher taxes as of NEXT year as the "Bush" tax cuts (renewed by Obama) expire and as new taxes and fees to help pay for Obamacare come online. There will also be increased healthcare costs, as we've already seen, forced by mandates from DC. Additionally, energy costs will continue to rise, particularly if Obama is reelected. In the short and medium term, businesses are cautious because they see costs going up, up, up.

This is a few weeks old but really good. It came out before it became known Ryan would be the nominee. Yes, it's a conservative publication. However, it is interesting to note Ryan easily wins reelection in a district that voted for Obama.

How "right-wing" can he be? How bad a politician can he be? The seat used to be held by a Democrat.

Doctor Fate wrote:

danivon wrote:The problem with Ryan's voucher system . . .

The problem with calling it a "voucher system" is that it's not.

Really? You need to go and edit Wikipedia then, because the article on the Ryan Plan has several mentions of 'vouchers' in the section on the Medicare and Medicaid changes:
The Path to Prosperity: Medicare and Medicaid changes

Wikipedia wrote:Medicare: Starting in 2022, the proposal would end the current Medicare program for all Americans born after 1956 and replace it with a new program (still called Medicare) which uses a voucher and would increase the age of eligibility for Medicare:[9]

Starting in 2022, the age of eligibility for Medicare would increase by two months per year until it reached 67 in 2033.

After 2022, the current Medicare program ends for all people who have not already enrolled. People already enrolled in the current Medicare program prior to 2022 would continue to receive the program. New enrollees after 2022 would be entitled to a voucher to help them purchase private health insurance.

Beneficiaries of the voucher payments would choose among competing private insurance plans operating in a newly established Medicare exchange. Plans would have to insure all eligible people who apply and would have to charge the same premiums for enrollees of the same age. The voucher payments would go directly from the government to the private insurance companies that people selected.

The voucher payments would vary with the health status of the beneficiary. For the average 65-year-old, payment in 2022 is specified to be $8,000, which is approximately the same dollar amount as projected net federal spending per capita for 65-year-olds in traditional Medicare in that year.

Each year, the voucher payments would increase to reflect increases in the consumer price index (average inflation) and the fact that enrollees in Medicare tend to be less healthy and require more costly health care as they age. They would not increase by the higher, healthcare inflation rate.

The voucher payments to enrollees would also vary with the income of the beneficiary. The wealthiest 2% of enrollees would receive 30 percent of the premium support amount described above; the next 6% would receive 50 percent of the amount described above; and people in the remaining 92% the income distribution would receive the full premium support amount described above.

Eligibility for the traditional Medicare program would not change for people who are age 55 or older by the end of 2011 or for people who receive Medicare benefits through the Disability Insurance program prior to 2022. People covered under traditional Medicare would, beginning in 2022, have the option of switching to the voucher system.

It also does NOTHING to current seniors (unlike the Democrats' claim that it "ends Medicare as we know it.").

Well, just because the changes don't affect people who retire in 2022 or after, does not mean it is not a fundamental change in Medicare. And you quoted the part where I mention the age group it does affect, so there's no need to patronise me, or assume I believe that it does affect current seniors.

Of course, current seniors probably have a far better idea of the value of Medicare to them.

ray

However, Obama isn't running on reforming our health care system, so a European type solution is not something that the American electorate can vote for. Therefore, my choice is between a party that has no plan to reform medicare or medicaid, and a party that does. With ACA, all of the projections continue to show that US health care will cost at least 50% more than other western countries

No you don't have great choices.
Obama did the ACA. It is incremental change at best, but its done, and it should bend health care inflation. Some people are already benfitting from the ACA, and more will begin to benfit soon...
Mitt and Ryan are all for getting rid of it, and starting fresh.... Like American politicians have done any number of times in the last three decades....
I doubt its politically possible, or physically possible, to do what would make the most sense..... Medicare for everyone, and immediate tough negotiation with all the medical sevices . What got European nations like Norway and Germany to 50% of the US absolute costs.
All Ryans proposed changes to medicare also come with what appears to be massive tax cuts for the wealthy and tax increases for the middle class... So, its not going to be easy peddling any change to Medicare with that in tow. .

rickyp wrote:The question is are his policy positions viewed as extreme?
...
But is it wrong to point to an espoused policy and ask, "Isn't that a little out of the main stream? Isn't that an extreme view?"
Ryans idea of vouchers for Medicare comes to mind as one area where he has proposed something that I believe most Americans will find to be an extreme renovation of Meicare....
Ryans budget, which I guess Mitt will not directly espouse or publicly support because many elements of it are unpopular is a legitimate target. And it was rather extreme, though its effect on the deficit was predicted to be negligible even by ryan. (Not balanced till 2040.)

To me, reaching for a solution that offers no real cure for high costs, and yet burdens the aging people even more as they enter retirement is extreme. But thats because I view European solutions in these areas as the norm.
And the objective truth is that the European solutions are less expensive and more effective.

Ricky, you disproved your own point. At first you try to say you aren't just viewing his plan as extreme. But then in your follow up post, you specifically stated you "view European solutions in this area as the norm", and therefore, you view Ryan's plan as outside the norm, or extreme.

You can't prove something is extreme because you believe the European model is the norm. That's not how it works. To label something as extreme, you take the entire range of possible solutions of an issue, regardless of whether or not you agree with them, and the peripheral solutions are the extreme ones. For health care, it's complete coverage and no coverage that are the two extremes. Every model of partial care is not extreme. A voucher system, or whatever term you'd like to use to describe it, is somewhere inside the range of extremes because it provides partial coverage of costs.

So you calling it extreme proves Ray's point, that it's the political parties trying to label the other as extreme, not actual facts doing so.

danivon wrote:

Doctor Fate wrote:

danivon wrote:The problem with Ryan's voucher system . . .

The problem with calling it a "voucher system" is that it's not.

Really? You need to go and edit Wikipedia then, because the article on the Ryan Plan has several mentions of 'vouchers' in the section on the Medicare and Medicaid changes:
The Path to Prosperity: Medicare and Medicaid changes

Wikipedia wrote:Medicare: Starting in 2022, the proposal would end the current Medicare program for all Americans born after 1956 and replace it with a new program (still called Medicare) which uses a voucher and would increase the age of eligibility for Medicare:[9]

Starting in 2022, the age of eligibility for Medicare would increase by two months per year until it reached 67 in 2033.

After 2022, the current Medicare program ends for all people who have not already enrolled. People already enrolled in the current Medicare program prior to 2022 would continue to receive the program. New enrollees after 2022 would be entitled to a voucher to help them purchase private health insurance.

Beneficiaries of the voucher payments would choose among competing private insurance plans operating in a newly established Medicare exchange. Plans would have to insure all eligible people who apply and would have to charge the same premiums for enrollees of the same age. The voucher payments would go directly from the government to the private insurance companies that people selected.

The voucher payments would vary with the health status of the beneficiary. For the average 65-year-old, payment in 2022 is specified to be $8,000, which is approximately the same dollar amount as projected net federal spending per capita for 65-year-olds in traditional Medicare in that year.

Each year, the voucher payments would increase to reflect increases in the consumer price index (average inflation) and the fact that enrollees in Medicare tend to be less healthy and require more costly health care as they age. They would not increase by the higher, healthcare inflation rate.

The voucher payments to enrollees would also vary with the income of the beneficiary. The wealthiest 2% of enrollees would receive 30 percent of the premium support amount described above; the next 6% would receive 50 percent of the amount described above; and people in the remaining 92% the income distribution would receive the full premium support amount described above.

Eligibility for the traditional Medicare program would not change for people who are age 55 or older by the end of 2011 or for people who receive Medicare benefits through the Disability Insurance program prior to 2022. People covered under traditional Medicare would, beginning in 2022, have the option of switching to the voucher system.

It also does NOTHING to current seniors (unlike the Democrats' claim that it "ends Medicare as we know it.").

Well, just because the changes don't affect people who retire in 2022 or after, does not mean it is not a fundamental change in Medicare. And you quoted the part where I mention the age group it does affect, so there's no need to patronise me, or assume I believe that it does affect current seniors.

Of course, current seniors probably have a far better idea of the value of Medicare to them.

Anyone under 55 would still have the option of having Medicare.

You read like Debbie Downer.

Keep on demagoguing. Republicans are not going to throw granny over the cliff.

Watch Erskine Bowles talk about Ryan http://projects.newsobserver.com/node/25426

And note well: his comments about Medicare refer to Ryan's 2011 plan, NOT the 2012 version which he worked out with Senator Wyden (D-Oregon).

Why is it that Ryan can work with a Democrat and yet Obama can't seem to work with a Republican--not even one, when it comes to budget or healthcare issues?

Someone's radical. It seems like it's Obama/Biden/Pelosi/Reid. They have no budget--violation of the law. They have no plan to reduce the deficit. Their policies have failed, so all they do is attack.