Would it be wrong to suggest that the only way to "fix" Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) would be to eliminate him, in the same manner that he's proposing to "fix" Medicare?

Of course, Rep. Ryan's proposal to phase out Medicare in favor of a much cheaper voucher program that would place seniors at the mercy of private insurers isn't about saving Medicare at all. It's about killing it.

Medicare is a federally-backed health insurance program for seniors. Why seniors? Because seniors as a group are just too sick for the private health care insurance sector to adequately provide coverage for. To rein in costs you can reduce benefits that the program provides or place more cost containment measures in place. Real pain is involved in both. But that's a legitimate area for debate. Medicare is a long term budget problem, unlike Social Security which isn't.

Or you can decide just to abolish the program altogether. Just eliminate Medicare in its entirety. This is what Rep. Ryan (R-WI) calls "fixing" Medicare, i.e., getting rid of it. Getting rid of it means abolishing the program and pushing seniors back into the private health insurance system and providing a subsidy to help pay the costs of your average 75 year old's health care. If costs go up? Well, start saving now.

I've paid into Medicare and Social Security my entire adult life. Even when I didn't earn enough money to pay much income tax, I always paid that 15.3% FICA tax right off the top, before deductions. And while it was sometimes a hardship, I always knew that eventually I'd qualify for affordable health care... if I managed to live that long.

And now Rep. Ryan says to me and every other American under the age of 55, "fuck you" to your dreams of economic and health care security. Unless you have the personal wealth to cover every contingency, you must live in fear your entire life, not just of your own mortality, but of the illness that will eventually drain your bank account to pay the obscene bonuses of insurance company CEOs.

Well, if that's what Rep. Ryan calls saving Medicare, I suppose he would have no objection to people threatening to save him too?