U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, the Ayn Rand fanatic, never tires of trying to shred the government safety net. His latest scheme involves reaching across the aisle — all the way to the Senate, actually — to a so-called Democrat who shares Ryan’s passion for privatization:

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) is teaming up with Paul Ryan, the House’s top budget guy and the author of the GOP’s controversial budget which proposes phasing out traditional Medicare and replacing it with a private plan… The move makes Wyden the first elected Democrat to endorse creating a premium-support system to compete with traditional fee-for-service Medicare…

The policy… allows insurers to compete with traditional Medicare turning Medicare essentially into a public option on a private insurance exchange. Wyden and Ryan would give patients subsidies that could be applied to either private insurance or fee for service Medicare…

Unlike previous plans, those subsidies would rise and fall with the cost of the plans themselves — not at a fixed rate below the explosive rate of health care inflation… This plan relies mostly on the theory that competition among insurers could hold down costs — a proposition with little evidence behind it — and would therefore save the government much less, if any, money at all.

The talking points for selling the Wyden-Ryan plan sound a lot like Mitt Romney’s plans for Medicare, so don’t be surprised if Ryan endorses Romney for president. Let’s hope voters can see past the smoke and mirrors of these cold-blooded frauds.