SIMPLY ORWELLIAN: Center for American Progress blogger Matt Yglesias on why Ryan's Medicare reforms wouldn’t affect those 55 and older:

The idea here is that today’s old people—a very white group that’s also hostile to gay rights, and thus sort of predisposed to like conservative politicians—will also get to benefit from an extremely generous single-payer health care system. But younger people—a less white group that’s friendly to gay rights and thus predisposed to skepticism about conservative politicians—will get to pay the high taxes to finance old people’s generous single-payer health care system, but then we won’t get to benefit from it. This is in part in order to clear headroom in the budget so as to make gigantic tax cuts for rich people affordable.

Yglesias' youth and inexperience show. Plans for reforming entitlements exempt those at or near retirement because "older Americans have built their lives around the existing system and don't have the opportunity to adjust to changes, whereas younger workers do." I would add that they will also not live to benefit from the improvements either.