Patients Would Pay More if Romney Restores Medicare Savings, Analysts Say

Current law includes $716 billion in Medicare savings, endorsed by the AARP. This article in the New York times points out that Romney's promise to revoke those savings means seniors would pay more for healthcare:

Marilyn Moon, vice president and director of the health program at the American Institutes for Research, calculated that restoring the $716 billion in Medicare savings would increase premiums and co-payments for beneficiaries by $342 a year on average over the next decade; in 2022, the average increase would be $577.

Beneficiaries, through their premiums and co-payments, share the cost of Medicare with the government. If Medicare’s costs increase — for instance, by raising payments to health care providers — so, too, do beneficiaries’ contributions.

Ryan's budget uses those same savings to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy, and only balances by including artificial spending caps that would push even more costs onto the elderly.  By contrast, Obamacare uses those savings to pay for healthcare.