Elderly will be hit hard by Romney's Medicare, Medicaid plans

If Mitt Romney carries the always hotly contested state of Florida, his smokescreen about mythical Obama "raid on Medicare" will have a lot to with it. A new Kaiser survey shows the Republican ticket has narrowed President Obama's edge on Medicare from 16 to just five points over the last month. As TPM explained, "Neutralizing the president's Medicare advantage is a remarkable feat given Romney's support for Paul Ryan's unpopular plan to convert the program into a voucher system."

A remarkable feat, indeed. And not just because the voucher program remains wildly unpopular. As the Congressional Budget Office and a recent Kaiser Family Foundation study confirmed, the Romney-Ryan plan to "voucherize and privatize" Medicare will invariably lead to much higher health care costs for future recipients. But today's elderly voters will feel a double sting under President Romney as well. After all, his pledge to "kill Obamacare dead" will erase hard-won drug benefits and health services those over 65 have gained under the Affordable Care Act. And as it turns out, Romney's proposal to slash Medicaid spending by more than a third over the next decade and give what remains as block grants to the states could jeopardize nursing home care for millions of American seniors.

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