GOP war on Medicare  an assault on elderly

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

Under Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget proposal, passed unanimously by House Republicans recently, Medicare would be replaced with a system of vouchers seniors would use to purchase private insurance. Republicans claim they actually are “saving Medicare” by ending it, but America isn’t buying it.

We are angrily confronting Republicans at their own town hall events, demanding an end to this assault on the nation’s elderly.

For 46 years, the GOP has been fighting to end Medicare because it violates the conservative mantra that the market should be the arbiter of all things. It is a single-payer health-care system that has little involvement from the private insurance industry. Medicare is both incredibly efficient and remarkably popular among the general public. It keeps people alive and well when the private market fails them, and that is why people are standing up to the proposed Republican cuts to the program.

In its war on Medicare, the GOP has implied that we should not care what happens to our elderly, and that they should spend their last days fighting with insurance companies just to survive. It is disgraceful.

Mike Schlossmann,

Cherry Valley