As I've mentioned before, the centerpiece of Paul Ryan's budget plan is its "reforms" for Medicare and Medicaid. To quickly summarize, the Ryan plan would eliminate Medicare as a single-payer health care program, and replace it with a series of means-tested vouchers that seniors would use to purchase health care on the private insurance market (in structure, it's similar to the Affordable Care Act). For Medicaid -- which mostly provides health insurance for poor children and long-term care for seniors -- Ryan would eliminate federal guidelines for the program in favor of no-strings-attached block grants to states.
While it's true these changes would trim trillions from the federal budget over ten years, they would do little to address the overall growth in health care spending. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explains:
