What Ryancare and Obamacare Have in Common

More

"It's really peculiar to come along and say you want to repeal the Affordable Care Act exchanges but create exchanges for the elderly," Brookings health care expert Hank Aaron tells Ezra Klein in this interview on Paul Ryan's Medicare plan.

It is peculiar. The more I think about it, the most peculiar thing about Paul Ryan's Medicare plan is his insistence to repeal the delivery system reforms within the Affordable Care Act right away and immediately pass a law that phases in Medicare reforms starting ... in 10 years. It's also peculiar, because in 10 years, the ACA begins to implement changes that look like a softer version of Ryan's plan.

This is, I think, one of the most underappreciated and undersold assets of the ACA. The architects of the ACA scheduled subsidies for the low-income to slow into the 2020s, just as the excise tax eats into employer health care premiums within the upper-middle class. As families across the country are more exposed to health care costs, they'll join the exchanges to buy cheaper insurance plans. This way, the health care overhaul is explicitly designed to move us from an employer-based system with huge subsidies to an exchange-based system with smaller subsidies. And this is all scheduled to happen in the same decade Ryan's voucher system would come online.

Read the full interview at Ezra Klein's blog.

Jump to comments

Derek Thompson is a senior editor at The Atlantic, where he oversees business coverage for TheAtlantic.com. More

Thompson has written for Slate, BusinessWeek, and the Daily Beast. He has also appeared as a guest on radio and television networks, including NPR, the BBC, CNBC, and MSNBC.

Get Today's Top Stories in Your Inbox (preview)


Elsewhere on the web

Join the Discussion

After you comment, click Post. If you’re not already logged in you will be asked to log in or register. blog comments powered by Disqus

Video

Miami: The Next Big Start-Up City?

How the city became a center for innovation

Video

Video

A Brief History of Romantic Comedies

From The Atlantic's Chris Orr

Video

Life in 'the New Arctic'

A moving portrait of a fading landscape

Video

Video

The Rise of New York City

A fascinating look at Manhattan in the 1940s

Video

What Is Methane Hydrate?

"Flaming ice" is a vast natural energy source

Video

NASA's Time-Lapse of the Sun

Now with epic dubstep music

Video

Shaken Not Tuned: Cocktail Experiments

Can a tuning fork improve a cocktail?

Video

Video

Is He Cheating? A 1950s Guide

'That little blonde secretary from the office?’

Video

New Yorkers: Vintage Vacuum-Tube Amps

Risking electric shock to restore old amplifiers

Video

The DIY Piano-Bicycle

Everybody needs a hobby

Video

What Does It Take to Make Real Craft Gin?

Tour the Green Hat Gin distillery

Video

Letter From the Editor

The June 2013 issue

Video

What Straights Can Learn From Same-Sex Couples

New insight from decades of research

Video

The End of the Mall Rat

A tribute to that pillar of teen culture

Writers

Up
Down

More in Business

In Focus

Picking up the Pieces After the Tornado in Moore, Oklahoma

Just In