An interesting post on deficits and health care...

...which I found on Health Beat while working on my term paper on the national debt. Here is a representative paragraph:

For the GOP, this goal of de-funding the health reform law has been increasingly intertwined with efforts to cut the federal deficit. The most recent conflation was House passage of Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget plan that included privatizing Medicare and turning Medicaid into a block-grant program—ideas that provoked outcry among seniors and others in town hall meetings around the country. Yesterday, Rep. Dave Camp, (R-MI) who is chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, said that in the face of opposition from Democrats, he will not push forward with the Medicare privatization proposal.