The Republican Medicare plan is an atrocity

There’s a lot that you should know about the Republican Medicare plan, a plan that Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) hopes to enact shortly after President-elect Donald Trump takes office, but the entirety of it can be summarized in just one sentence.

Republicans want to charge seniors a lot more for inferior health coverage.

Over the last half-decade, Ryan has proposed several different versions of the Republican plan to charge seniors a lot more for inferior health care. There are important differences among these versions. Some would phase out Medicare entirely over the course of many years, while others would merely make the system more inefficient and drive out-of-pocket costs for seniors much higher. The most recent version is impossible to fully evaluate because it lacks important details — like numbers....