The document discusses the Republican plan to reform Medicare known as the Ryan Plan and compares it to the German health care system. The Ryan Plan would replace the current Medicare system with one where seniors choose private insurance plans subsidized by the government. The German system is similar and includes choice among approved plans. While the German system costs less per capita than the US system, it includes cost control regulations that the Ryan Plan lacks. For the Ryan Plan to be sustainable, cost controls would likely be needed to prevent seniors' costs from rising rapidly over time.

1. More Slides from Ed Dolan’s Econ Blog http://dolanecon.blogspot.com/ What Can We Learn about the Ryan Medicare Plan from German Experience? Posted April 21, 2011 Terms of Use: These slides are made available under Creative Commons License Attribution—Share Alike 3.0 . You are free to use these slides as a resource for your economics classes together with whatever textbook you are using. If you like the slides, you may also want to take a look at my textbook, Introduction to Economics , from BVT Publishers.