Republicans Less Than Enthusiastic On Ryan's Medicare Plan

Jed Lewison at Daily Kos has an article entitled Senate Republicans not whipping support for Ryan's Medicare repeal plan. It's a pretty clear indication that McConnell, who is not going to whip Republican senators to force them to vote the party line, recognizes the toxicity of the Ryan plan.

One GOP senator who spoke on the condition of anonymity expressed his belief that Ryan made a serious tactical mistake by spelling out Medicare reforms in his budget plan. “All Ryan had to do was set an overall number and leave it up to the policymaking committees how to come up with the savings."

According to Lewison:

The real political problem Republicans have is that they think that the best way to reduce Medicare costs is to shift the burden from government to individuals. That may solve a budgetary problem for the government, but it simply creates a new problem for individuals. In contrast, Democrats have focused on reducing the cost of health care overall by looking at systemic reforms.

Obviously, there is a ton more work that needs to be done to reduce overall costs—we still need to keep things like the public option on the table—but the Democratic approach of reducing overall costs is superior on both policy and political grounds to the Republican approach of burden shifting. For the GOP, the only path out of the wilderness is to recognize this reality, but their reaction to Newt Gingrich's criticism of RyanCare shows they are nowhere near understanding the box they've put themselves in.