Mitt's Medicare misfortunes

At a recent AARP event in New Orleans, Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan was booed after he discussed repealing President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

For a party that traditionally performs strongly with older voters, it was a chilly reception.

More troubling for the GOP campaign are new polls by Reuters that show Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s lead among Americans 60 or older has taken a severe fall from a 20 point lead to less than 4 points.

In addition, a new Gallup poll shows voters trust Obama more than Romney to have a positive influence on Medicare.

In certain battleground states with older populations, such as Florida, voters expressed more faith in Obama’s Medicare plan than Romney’s, 50 percent to 44 percent.

Part of selecting Ryan as his vice presidential running mate meant Romney would have to confront the Medicare issue sooner or later.

In his role as chairman of the House Budget Committee, Ryan proposed revolutionizing Medicare by giving seniors money to buy a government or private plan, a method Democrats have criticized as a voucher program that won’t be enough to cover medical costs as traditional Medicare does.

Republicans argue this will preserve the program’s longevity. So far, though, the public has been extremely reluctant to accept Ryan’s plan, with older voters opposing it by a 2-to-1 ratio.

Ryan’s discussion of Medicare has focused on the negatives of Obama’s plan, a strategy that hasn’t been very successful.

Ryan has repeatedly criticized Obama for $716 billion in cuts to Medicare, cuts that Ryan’s budget plan also made.

As for the candidate, Romney has fought to keep the focus off Ryan’s plan, arguing that Romney is “the guy running for president, not him.”

But these polls seem to indicate the Democrats are winning the marketing battle against Medicare.

Analysts say Romney must reverse the decline in support among older voters for a win.

Jonathan Oberlander, a health policy specialist at the University of North Carolina, said, “If Romney loses seniors, he loses this election, period. A bad showing nationally (among older voters) does not bode well for Florida and other states with big senior populations.”

Romney and Ryan will have to address how their Medicare plan will benefit older voters, a topic they will most likely address at the debates in October.

Rather than focusing on criticizing Obama’s plan, the GOP campaign needs to elaborate on the positives of its approach.

They need to find a way to bring older voters back into the Republican fold if they want a chance of winning.

And the GOP knows this is a bigger issue than Romney’s win in November.

This is likely their last chance to repeal Obama’s health care law before more of its changes go into effect in 2014 and become entrenched in the system.

If Republicans want that chance, they have to find a way to market their Medicare plans successfully to older voters.

­— gwinslow@indiana.edu