Ryan budget plan proposes 'patient-centered' healthcare reforms

Banking on repealing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan (R) on Tuesday unveiled a plan targeting four major areas of reform – second on the list is healthcare.

Ryan, who chairs the House Budget Committee, is specifically aiming to accomplish three things with his version of healthcare reform: giving states flexibility when it comes to Medicaid and doing away with both Medicaid expansion and health insurance exchange subsidies altogether.

[Also: Critics say Ryan's Medicaid plan puts pressure on safety nets]

“Our budget repeals the president's healthcare law and replaces it with patient-centered reforms,” Ryan wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed Tuesday.

In his proposal, The path to prosperity: A responsible, balanced budget, Ryan envisions that as baby boomers retire, social welfare programs “will start to burst at the seams.” In the coming decade, Social Security will grow 5.8 percent annually and Medicare 6.2 percent, while the overall economy expands at a slower 4.8 percent average.

“Medicaid – thanks in part to its expansion under the healthcare law – will grow at an astounding 9.9 percent,” Ryan wrote in his budget plan. “Without reform, entitlement programs will overwhelm all other items in the federal budget. And the resulting national debt will overwhelm our economy.”

In the section "Safety nets strengthened," Ryan touches on giving states more flexibility on Medicaid. “The budget resolution proposes to transform Medicaid from an open-ended entitlement into a block-granted program like State Children’s Health Insurance Program. These programs would be unified under the proposal and grown together for population growth and inflation.”

The second part of his healthcare plan calls for repealing PPACA's Medicaid expansion and "removing the law’s burdensome programmatic mandates on state governments.”

On the matter of health insurance exchanges, the plan again aims to repeal a provision in PPACA: “Instead of putting health-care decisions into the hands of bureaucrats, Congress should pursue patient-centered healthcare reforms that actually bring down the cost of care by empowering consumers.”

Much the way Ryan maintained, as a vice presidential candidate, that his goal is to preserve the so-called entitlement programs rather than do away with them, he reiterated the point in his plan.

“I want Medicare to be there for my kids – just as it's there for my mom today. But Medicare is going broke. Under our proposal, those in or near retirement will see no changes, and future beneficiaries will inherit a program they can count on,” Ryan wrote in his op-ed. “Starting in 2024, we'll offer eligible seniors a range of insurance plans from which they can choose – including traditional Medicare – and help them pay the premiums.”