Last November, the Congressional Budget Office did a preliminary analysis of the Ryan-Rivlin plan and found that the Medicaid and Medicare reforms, plus a change in medical malpractice law, would save $350 billion from 2011 through 2021.
Other possible ways to save money -- Ryan has supported the repeal of the national health care law. Were he simply to propose a repeal of the bill's Medicaid expansion, which would add 18 million to the program's rolls by 2021, it would save $674 billion from 2012 to 2021, according to CBO.
The Ryan proposal is also expected to cap discretionary spending as well as cap spending as a percentage of GDP.
When President Obama ignored the proposals of his own fiscal commission, it was an indication that he had chosen politics over leadership. That is, it was more important for him to goad Republicans into proposing entitlement reform so Democrats could attack them for it, then it was for him to try and actually address the nation's challenges. Evidently, Ryan has decided to take the opposite approach.