May 12, 2011
George Will is very proud of himself because he found an anti-Ryan protester who didn’t know that the 18th century refers to the 1700s and not the 1800s. This provides the basis for his lecture to progressive baby boomers, including President Obama, who think that the security provided by Medicare and Social Security is somehow intrinsic to the country.
Will rightly points out that these programs are relatively new to the country. After all, Social Security has been around for less than a third of the country’s existence (dated from 1776) and Medicare for less than a quarter.
Of course Will could have pointed out that it is a relatively new phenomenon for people to have a life expectancy beyond age 60. For the vast majority of the country’s history life expectancy was considerably shorter. He can include the expectation that people will live into their 80s and 90s into his list of progressive conceits that ignore history.
If he wanted to look at the actual proposal on the table, the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of the Ryan plan shows that it will hugely increase the cost of buying Medicare equivalent policies. Its projections show that the cost of such plans would rise by more than $34 trillion over the program’s 75-year planning period. This is equivalent to almost 7 times the size of the projected Social Security shortfall. This projected additional cost comes to $110,000 for every man, woman, and child in the country.
But, this is talking about the impact of a policy going forward, not history, so Will is not interested.
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