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At a forum sponsored by The Hill today, Paul Ryan said:
I have always said all along all of those ideas [e.g., making his Medicare plan optional] are ideas we should be considering when it comes to legislation." When you are down in the details, should there be a fee for service option alongside premium support…they are all good ideas.
It strikes me that this thpe of compromise may be where we end up in 2012 if Obama wins the White House and Republicans hold the House and take the Senate. Or if a Republican wins the White House but the Senate stays in Democrats' hands.
This type of "halfway there" reform may be what we get. A similar optional plan reform on ObamaCare might also be a reality, as Yuval Levin and Ramesh Ponnuru have argued.
Divided, "options-inclusive" reforms are never just a pure contest between two versions in a program. They are often subjec to politics in various ways, as we have seen with Medicare Advantage. And no one knows what reforms of this kind will ultimately do to slow the cost growth of the program. But we may well find out.
At today's session Ryan also took a shot at the Democrats when asked about their resistance: "I expected the demagoguery, but I expected some responsible leaders in the other party to do something." Yes, if the Dems would actually say what they would do to the program many of them admit is in trouble, we could possibly find out how a partial reform would work even before 2012. But that's not looking hopeful.
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