WASHINGTON — While Mitt Romney and Paul D. Ryan are campaigning on a promise to "preserve and protect" Medicare, their proposal to revamp the popular government health insurance program would be the plan's biggest gamble since it was created nearly half a century ago.
The members of the Republican presidential ticket argue that giving seniors vouchers to shop for a private insurance plan would spark competition among health insurers, holding down costs and ensuring the long-term viability of Medicare.
But several previous experiments with privatizing Medicare insurance coverage have ended up raising costs to taxpayers. And on the other side, there is little evidence that moving millions of elderly and disabled patients into commercial health plans will protect their coverage or tame the nation's skyrocketing healthcare tab.
"Doubling down on private insurers is a risky proposition," said University of North Carolina health policy professor Jonathan Oberlander, a leading Medicare historian. "Medicare has lost money on private plans for a long time."
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http://www.latimes.com/health/la-na-medicare-20120819,0,7076443.story
