Ron Wyden, March 2012, writing in the Huffington Post, “Preserving the Medicare Guarantee: Why I’ve Been Working with Paul Ryan”:

I know that polls show that the majority of Americans like Medicare the way it is today. But don’t let that number confuse what’s at stake: unless Congress enacts meaningful Medicare reform in the near future, seniors will be faced with inevitable cost-shifting and eventual benefit cuts until Medicare doesn’t look anything like the program does today.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that the Medicare Hospital Trust Fund will be out of money by 2022. And as MedPac explained in its report to Congress last year, Congress’s continued inability to come up with a long term solution for Medicare’s reimbursement rate for doctors “is undermining confidence in the Medicare program.”

Last year, Congress passed a mere 60-day extension of Medicare physician pay rates in order to avoid asking doctors to swallow a 27.4 percent cut to Medicare physician pay. Although a ‘deal’ was eventually reached to pay doctors for their services through the end of this year, chronic payment uncertainty and already low reimbursement rates are forcing more and more doctors to consider dropping or limiting the number of Medicare patients they are willing to treat. This is a significant problem given that retiring Baby-Boomers are no longer a theoretical problem. Starting this year, an average of 10,000 Americans will enroll in Medicare each day for the next 20 years.

[…]

While most seniors are very happy with the Medicare benefits that they get from the government, it is important to remember that Medicare isn’t perfect and doesn’t work the same for everyone.

For example, traditional Medicare does not offer catastrophic coverage or dental benefits. To get those options, seniors have to pay for supplemental private insurance. While many private plans offer the option of prescription coverage as part of their insurance packages, under traditional Medicare, seniors have to sign up for those benefits separately. While some seniors like the freedom Medicare gives them to find and choose their own participating doctors, some prefer an integrated private health plan that has identified a network of doctors, testing facilities and pharmacies that work together, collaboratively on the needs of their enrollees .

And again, just because you are enrolled in Medicare’s government-administered option does not mean that you are guaranteed to find a doctor willing to take on new Medicare patients. Seniors in historically-low reimbursement states like Oregon have long had difficulty finding doctors and more and more seniors in other parts of the country are starting to encounter this problem. For this reason, many seniors in Oregon have been grateful to learn that Medicare gave them the option of enrolling in a private plan.

[…]

There have been a lot of mischaracterizations. So, let’s be clear about what the Wyden-Ryan plans really says.

Wyden-Ryan doesn’t eliminate the traditional Medicare plan, instead it guarantees that seniors who want to enroll in Medicare’s traditional fee for service plan will always have that option.

Wyden-Ryan doesn’t privatize Medicare because Medicare beneficiaries already have the option of enrolling in private health insurance plans. Wyden-Ryan makes those private plans more robust and accountable by forcing them to — for the first time — compete directly with traditional Medicare.

Wyden-Ryan protects the purchasing power of traditional Medicare and private sector innovation to make both types of Medicare stronger and more senior-friendly. All participating private plans will be required to offer benefits that are at least as comprehensive as traditional Medicare and any plan that is found taking advantage of seniors or providing inadequate care will be kicked out of the system. Cherry picking healthier seniors will be made unprofitable by a robust risk-adjustment mechanism and policed by the Medicare administrators.

Wyden-Ryan would also uphold the Medicare Guarantee by ensuring that seniors will always be able to afford their health benefits. Unlike a voucher program that would give seniors a fixed amount of money to purchase health plans, Wyden-Ryan would adjust premium support payments each year to reflect the actual cost of health insurance premiums. In addition, low income seniors, including dual-eligibles will receive additional benefits to cover out of pocket costs – ensuring that seniors have the same choices regardless of income. Yes, if private plans are able to devise a way to provide the same health benefits as traditional Medicare for less money, a senior might have to pay extra if he or she still wants to enroll in the government option. But if you could get the exact same benefits for less money, why would you want to pay more?

Beyond that, Wyden-Ryan creates a catastrophic benefit that does not exist in traditional Medicare, ensuring that no senior is bankrupted by a major illness.

Finally, Wyden-Ryan isn’t a piece of legislation. It does not include legislative language or specifications detailing exactly how the system would work. If Wyden-Ryan or something like Wyden-Ryan gets to the legislative stage, those specifications will be important to get right as the devil is always in the details. Right now, however, Wyden-Ryan is simply a policy paper intended to start a conversation about how Democrats and Republicans might work together to uphold the Medicare Guarantee.

[…]

Those who say they support Wyden-Ryan simply for political cover are neither helping seniors nor being bipartisan. Rather, using Wyden-Ryan for political purposes harms seniors by making a bipartisan agreement to uphold the Medicare Guarantee that much harder. Anyone who does this deserves to be called out on it.

[…]

I do know, however, that because we worked together, Paul Ryan now knows more about the Medicare Guarantee and protecting seniors from unscrupulous insurance practices than he did before. If that is reflected in his budget this year, as someone who has been fighting for seniors since he was 27 years old, I think that’s a step in the right direction.

And then this, from just a few days ago, also appearing in the Huffington Post:  “Ron Wyden Distances Himself From Paul Ryan, Says Mitt Romney Is ‘Talking Nonsense'”:

Wyden noted he had spoken and voted against the Medicare provisions in the Ryan budget. “Governor Romney needs to learn you don’t protect seniors by makings things up, and his comments sure won’t help promote real bipartisanship,” he added.

Wyden and Ryan did collaborate on a policy paper in December, proposing that seniors be given a choice between traditional Medicare coverage and an alternative private plan. Wyden’s decision to team up with Ryan resulted in a fair amount of criticism from fellow Democrats, prompting him to defend the collaboration in a 2,380-word op-ed published on The Huffington Post.

[…]

Wyden added that even if House Republicans incorporated the joint Medicare proposal in their budget, he couldn’t “imagine a scenario” in which he would support that budget as a whole.

Regardless of Wyden’s push back, Republicans will likely continue to seize on the Wyden-Ryan plan to counter Democratic attacks on Ryan’s original 2011 budget proposal. President Barack Obama has repeatedly targeted Romney for embracing the Ryan budget and calling it “marvelous,” even though Romney has maintained that it is not the plan he would put forward if elected president.

So what’s the deal here?  Huffington Post (and progressives more broadly) want us to believe the apostate Wyden has walked back his work with Paul Ryan.  Reading the article, however, I’m not sure I see that.  Is Wyden in fact distancing himself from Ryan?  If so, on what basis?  Does he now suddenly disagree with his own co-authored policy paper? If so, why?

Or are we supposed to think that Wyden did a walk back he didn’t do — and will he allow us to get that impression in order to give his party political cover?

Because from where I’m sitting, that reeks of “using Wyden-Ryan for political purposes” which “harms seniors by making a bipartisan agreement to uphold the Medicare Guarantee that much harder.”  And “anyone who does this deserves to be called out on it.”

Right, Mr Wyden?