Under the proposal, most elderly people who would be entitled to premium support payments would pay more for their health care than they would pay under the current Medicare system. For a typical 65-year-old with average health spending enrolled in a plan with benefits similar to those currently provided by Medicare, CBO estimated the beneficiary’s spending on premiums and out-of-pocket expenditures as a share of a benchmark amount: what total health care spending would be if a private insurer covered the beneficiary. By 2030, the beneficiary’s share would be 68 percent of that benchmark under the proposal, 25 percent under the extended-baseline scenario, and 30 percent under the alternative fiscal scenario.

The Congressional Budget Office, the gold standard of budget analysis, has picked apart the Ryan "Path to Prosperity" plan, and finds that it will substantially burden seniors.

Dean Baker does a bit more math: "Using the CBO assumption of 2.5 percent annual inflation, the voucher would have grown to $9,750 by 2030. This means that a Medicare type plan for someone age 65 would be $30,460 under Representative Ryan's plan, leaving seniors with a bill of $20,700. (This does not count various out of pocket medical expenditures not covered by Medicare.)"

According to the Social Security trustees, the benefit for a medium wage earner who first starts collecting benefits at age 65 in 2030 would be $32,200. (This adjusts the benefit projected by the Social Security trustees [$19,652 in 2010 dollars] for the 2.5 percent annual inflation rate assumed by CBO.) For close to 70 percent of seniors, Social Security is more than half of their retirement income. Most seniors will get a benefit that is less than the medium earners benefit described here since their average earnings are less than that of a medium earner and they start collecting Social Security benefits before age 65.

He also points out that the voucher system Ryan proposes won't keep pace with healthcare cost inflation. Costs will rise faster than the voucher amounts increase, and seniors will be paying more and more out of pocket. There's the Medicaid side of this as well, with many frail elderly reliant on that program for long-term care. The CBO says that the block grant plan might allow states to achieve great efficiences, but "the large projected reduction in payments would probably require states to decrease payments to Medicaid providers, reduce eligibility for Medicaid, provide less extensive coverage to beneficiaries, or pay more themselves than would be the case under current law."

Ryan actually calls this health care reform, saying in an interview with Bloomberg TV's Peter Cook, "If you don't address health care you don't fix the budget." This isn't addressing healthcare. Which I guess proves, once again, that there really isn't any Republican plan for healthcare reform. The only solution they have is to take it away from more people.