As the Congressional Budget Office and a recent Kaiser Family Foundation study confirmed, the Romney-Ryan plan to "voucherize and privatize" Medicare will invariably lead to much higher health care costs for future recipients. But today's elderly voters will feel a double sting under President Romney as well. After all, his pledge to "kill Obamacare dead" will erase hard-won drug benefits and health services those over 65 have gained under the Affordable Care Act. And as it turns out, Romney's proposal to slash Medicaid spending by more than a third over the next decade and give what remains as block grants to the states could jeopardize nursing home care for millions of American seniors...

...As it turns out, what we know for sure about Mitt Romney's assault on senior citizens may pale compared to what we don't. Romney, after all, has promised to magically offset $5 trillion in tax cuts and $2 trillion in new defense spending over the next decade by closing as yet unnamed tax credits, deductions and deductions. But among Uncle Sam's $1.1 trillion in annual tax expenditures are a host of tax breaks for the elderly. That figure is forecast to hit almost $1.4 trillion by 2015. While the home mortgage and health expense deductions top that list, untaxed Social Security benefits will reach $44 billion annually in three years. And that's just one example. Mitt Romney has called for raising the retirement age to 67 for those now 55 and under. (In his 2008 campaign, Romney supported President Bush's proposal to privatize the retiree pension system.)