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So I figured I’d wait until today to get the details of Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan, but this is pretty much all that his proposal says about it:

Starting in 2022, new Medicare bene?ciaries will be enrolled in the same kind of health care program that members of Congress enjoy. Future Medicare recipients will be able to choose from a list of guaranteed coverage options, and they will be given the ability to choose a plan that works best for them….The Medicare premium-support payment would be adjusted so that wealthier bene?ciaries would receive a lower subsidy, the sick would receive a higher payment if their conditions worsened, and lower-income seniors would receive additional assistance to cover out-of-pocket costs.

….Health plans that choose to participate in the Medicare exchange must agree to offer insurance to all Medicare bene?ciaries, to avoid cherry-picking and ensure that Medicare’s sickest and highest-cost bene?ciaries receive coverage….While there would be no disruptions in the current Medicare fee-for-service program for those currently enrolled or becoming eligible in the next ten years, all seniors would have the choice to opt into the new Medicare program once it begins in 2022.

Is that it? Am I missing something? How is anybody supposed to analyze how this would actually work with no more detail than this?

For now, I’m going to assume that I’m missing something. There must be a more detailed document around somewhere that I haven’t found yet. There has to be, right?

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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