With the Republican House censoring the word “voucher” and the phrase “ends Medicare” and even the liberal Washington Post “fact checker” agreeing such words are inappropriate, it’s pretty clear that one of the big battles in 2012 will be whether or not the media will allow liberals to give an accurate description of Paul Ryan’s proposed voucher program.
Democrats need to push hard on this, obviously.
Also too, we should remember that most of the important people in our national media, like Glenn Kessler, are dishonest sociopaths.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
They tried this with Social Security, if memory serves, saying “personaliztion not privatization”. I suspect it will work just as well.
Damned at Random
If they don’t like voucher, how about ration coupon?
dmsilev
How about Happy Fun Coupon? Or maybe Puppy Coupon. Everyone loves puppies. Why are you against puppies?
walt
Republicans are practiced in Orwellian language arts but their Medicare plan – and the Ryan tax plan – are kryptonite. Republicans cannot escape it even if they manage to censor various words. As grotesque as Donald Trump is, he called this one correctly: a GOP “death wish”.
greenergood
O/T new brand of tea for John Cole to pursue
http://www.mediaite.com/online/rush-limbaugh-announces-a-huge-new-venture-his-own-sweet-tea-line/
another brand of kool-aid …
freelancer
DougJ, DougJ! Why do you persecute me?
cathyx
I like the phrase used on a previous post, “Single Prayer Health Care”.
Arrik
I’m sorry to say that my default position on anyone in the media at this late juncture is “enemy.” As a result of a combination of laziness and careerism, these assholes have long ago abdicated any sense of obligation to speak the truth. Official organs of the establishment such as the WaPo cannot die soon enough.
Redshift
Using words other than the deliberately deceptive language Republicans prescribe for their policies (“Clear Skies Initiative,” anyone?) is now considered lying.
Got it.
Citizen Alan
@Damned at Random:
At the town hall meeting last week in Oxford MS, I asked Alan Nunnelee about Ryancare and flat out referred to it as a coupon for $8000 worth of health insurance to pay towards a policy for 70-year-olds. He didn’t care for that formulation. I nearly asked him if we’d get a free car wash with our insurance but didn’t think of it in time.
RosiesDad
On the Medicare ending voucher plan proposed by Eddie Munster Ryan, Krugman has laid out the facts and the talking points. They need to regurgitated multiple times a day until they are a mantra.
That’s how the Rethugs do it; that’s how the Dems have to do it.
Citizen Alan
@Arrik:
Sad to say, but the Kaplan Test Prep Daily will never die. It’s too valuable as a propaganda tool for the corporation that owns it and uses it to undermine public education in favor of fly-by-night private colleges.
SBJules
Republicans now want to reduce the “vouchers” for the WIK program. Insuring that mothers with young children can afford proper food used to be bi-partisan.
Dennis SGMM
Yep, we need all of the two-fisted fightin’ Democrats to step up and get loud. Democrats like… or maybe… Okay, there’s always Barney Frank because there’s only Barney Frank. It only remains to be seen how much of the GOP’s suicide run the Dems cave on for the next UI extension.
PurpleGirl
When I read portions of the Ryan plan it seemed to me that they were saying that the government would pay the insurance company directly for the you; they aren’t talking about giving the citizens the money to pay the insurance company. They also had something in there about a tax credit. I had searched the PDF for the word “voucher” and it came up in reference to other things but not to paying for health care. I also searched on “premium support” and that term didn’t come up either. The Rethuglicans are a pack of grade A liars.
RalfW
It’s over. Orwell won.
bemused
@Citizen Alan:
Ha, free car wash. That would have been fun.
RalfW
That is to say, I double plus like the new Medicare, same as the old Medicare, only cheaper, more lethal, and nicer to Republicans.
Violet
Somethings wrong with “voucher”? How about:
Ration ticket
Ration chit
Ration slip
Coupon
Token
Box Top
Redshift
Who knew that Newt was just ahead of the curve with his “accurately quoting what I said last week is false” dictum…
Davis X. Machina
Just finished the section in What Hath God Wrought on the Gag Rule in the antebellum House of Representatives.
Everything old is new again.
cleek
@RosiesDad:
history proves that Dems won’t.
what’s plan B?
cleek
also, i have to ask: is the House mailing facility the only way Dems were planning to communicate this stuff?
nevermind… i just saw my own previous post.
Damned at Random
RE WIC reductions-
Love the fetus, hate the incubator
trollhattan
@Citizen Alan:
Kudos and a toast to you, sir!
Warren Terra
I actually don’t like the word “voucher” because to me a “voucher” is redeemable for the item in question. What Ryan is offering is more of a coupon – redeemable for a discount on health insurance, not for the full price of health insurance.
Steve
If the media is willing to let us use “end Medicare as we know it” then we should just go with that. It doesn’t sound any worse and it’s not worth fighting on two fronts.
Jennifer
@Citizen Alan: It’s actually even worse than you described.
The “premium support” proposed by Ryan and passed by house Republicans is equivalent to the cost incurred by an average 65 year old in the year the voucher is implemented. Problem is, the costs incurred by people 5 years older than the minimum Medicare age of 65 are typically DOUBLE those costs.
Think of how hard it is for people in the prime of life to get insurers to pay what they are supposed to pay. Now imagine an 80-year-old with dementia having to deal with them. Yeah, great idea. Why don’t we just drop the pretense of giving a fuck about old people and just smother them with a pillow on their 65th birthday? That will save even MORE money – and lord knows Paris Hilton can use it…she doesn’t yet have a private jet in every color.
I wrote about this over at my joint yesterday, if anyone’s interested.
Dennis SGMM
@cleek:
I live in CA-26 so I get self-congratulatory mail from our closeted Congressman, David Dreier. Of course I read every line.
Redshift
@cleek: Obviously not, but if you want them to fight, just giving up on a free communication medium doesn’t seem like a good way to start.
TuiMel
@Damned at Random:
Don’t forget to hate the incubated…
Redshift
@Warren Terra: How about “ice-floe”? That seems to capture the idea of giving seniors something that will inadequately hold them up for a while, as well as the obvious longer-term result.
Martin
I think the Dems should go with ‘Death Policy’.
Mike in NC
@SBJules:
Cutting vouchers for Whackos, Idiots, & Klansmen? That would definitely piss off the base.
Warren Terra
I’m also interested in whether it’s possible to communicate the notion that the Ryan plan is actually an incredibly regressive estate tax.
See, Ryan’s not a totally heartless monster: in addition to its inadequate (and deflating year-on-year) subsidies for seniors to try to find health insurance in the private market, he also offers increased subsidies for the poorest seniors. If you’re sufficiently broke, you get a special voucher that might bring you back to the level of care you might have gotten from Medicare.
Now, how do you become sufficiently poor? By spending your assets on health care, of course. After you’ve exhausted your resources trying to pay the difference between Ryan’s Medicare-replacing annually decreasing insurance subsidies and the actual cost of health insurance for seniors, you get the better “vouchers”. Money that might have made your life comfortable or that might have helped your grandkids buy their first home now goes to Aetna instead.
Although, of course, if you are so privileged as to be able to actually pay for health care without going broke, this doesn’t apply to you.
Thus: the change from Medicare to Ryancare amounts to a confiscatory estate tax on those elderly so improvident as to be less than wealthy, and so imprudent as not to die quickly. An estate tax that is used, of course, to pay for tax reductions on the wealthy – because those reductions are part of Ryan’s plan, with their budgetary consequences somewhat ameliorated by the cuts in Medicare.
cleek
@Redshift:
“give up” ? do the Dems have a choice in the matter?
on the bright side: precedent! the GOP won’t be in charge of the House forever.
Davis X. Machina
@Redshift: Older folks tend to read their mail, if my parents are anything to go by…
PurpleGirl
@Redshift: There’s this problem with the continuing existence of ice floes…
Laertes
Why do Republicans get to decide which mailers Democrats get to send to their constituents?
Martin
@Davis X. Machina: Hmm. I wonder if the Dems know that they have to send the mail in all caps. Remember, it’s not important unless the Jesus Key is on.
Dennis SGMM
@Warren Terra:
Ryan’s plan is just another way for the GOP to take us back to the Good Old Days. You know; if you became too old to work you starved and if you got sick then you died. It’s just their way of simplifying a confusing world.
Jay in Oregon
@Laertes:
I’d like to know the answer, too. There’s “framing the debate”, and then there’s this…
And Another Thing...
@Damned at Random: Plus Rep Virginia Foxx had an ammendment to eliminate teaching/assisting mothers with breastfeeding. IIRC about 165 idiots voted to eliminate the funding.
Sometimes I’m glad I’m getting old and won’t have to live in the cold, desolate world these “people” are building.
cleek
@Jay in Oregon:
because, there exists a thing called the House Franking Commission. and…
and
there are six members. three of each party. but the chair is a Republican.
presumably, the chair, Aaron Schock, carries some weight.
or maybe not…
ppcli
@Violet: You’ve got to think like a Republican. Within two weeks everyone on Fox will be instructed to call them “Eternal Life Certificates”. For about a month, the NYT and WaPo will refer to “vouchers, which the Republicans prefer to call “Eternal Life Certificates”. By the next month, the newspapers will be Gleichsaltung-ed too. Three months, tops, and Kessler will be attacking people who don’t use the approved vocabulary.
PeakVT
@Jay in Oregon: Because the mailers in question are being sent using US taxpayer money appropriated by Congress. Apparently at the same time Congress authorized the program it also authorized itself to review the mailers sent under the program.
Martin
@And Another Thing…: Well, I googled for that and since the free market offers the service, government shouldn’t have any part of it.
MattMinus
I had no idea that the House Republicans had any say so over Dem mailings. Given that they do, I’m surprised that they ever let any go out.
slightly-peeved
The trouble for the republicans is that they spent so much time in 2009 inducing paranoia about medicare that seniors now are suspicious of any change in the program. Which, in the case of Couponcare is the entirely appropriate response. Weren’t there some polls that showed that people still hated the rand sorry ryan plan even after the Republican arguments for it were heard? Nice to see them hoisted on their own petard for once.
Gramsci
Great moments in WashPo history:
“Most would agree that Ms. Parks could find relief by leaning on a seat in one of the middle rows of the bus.”
rikyrah
it’s called COUPONCARE.
VOUCHERCARE.
Get ready to give Grandma and Grandpa 500/month care
Epicurus
They are attempting to enforce the rules of “Newspeak” on us all. Orwell is spinning in his grave.
CathiBea
CRAP – Congressman Ryan’s Allotment Program.(not original to me
Fwiffo
If they don’t like voucher, how about coupon?
jayackroyd
Just ataying on the record DougJ.
http://wapo.st/jfDAlC
Ezra reflects the elite DC consensus–the goal is to move Medicare and Medicaid to the exchanges. This WILL involve premium support, and the end of Medicare as we know it.
IMO, it pissed off Obama and the Democratic leadership to find that Bob Dole’s promise that 10-15 GOP senators would support Dole-Daschle’s AEI/PPI compromise that was the PPACA.
Likewise, it has pissed off Ryan and his GOP wonks that Democrats are repudiating their own premium support language.
But the direction is clear. Premium support, exchanges, and the end of Medicare as we know it is the consensus. IMO, of course. Your mileage may vary. But, you know, read the stuff.
Background material for my claim is here: http://bit.ly/ik1oNL
RosiesDad
@cleek:
Plan B? There is no Plan B. There’s not much evidence that there is a Plan A. Isn’t that our (seemingly) endless source of frustration?
grandpajohn
@Dennis SGMM:
Actually I view it in the opposite, it is the first steps into moving us into the future as envisioned in the movie “Logan’s Run”
Cerberus
They aren’t even pretending anymore to be anything other than the personal propaganda services for their CEO’s political desires.
I mean, they used to at least pretend to be hiding behind “objective unbiased journalism” in which the only means they could talk about things was he-said, she-said bullshit.
But now?
They are openly trying to act as a PR service for the Republican Party and not being at all subtle about it.
As disappointing as Obama has been, he definitely has our oligarchs scared, literally pant-shittingly terrified and they’ve abandoned any notion of subtlety and revealing exactly how deep the corruption goes and where in their desperate effort to sell em while they got em as it were.