The Romney campaign tries to sell its Medicare privatization scheme to seniors by arguing that the controversial premium support structure would only affect future retirees and preserve existing benefits for Americans over the age of 55. But while today’s elderly population would remain in traditional fee-for-service Medicare under the Ryan proposal, they too could be affected by Ryan’s ambitious restructuring scheme. Here is why:

As soon as private insurers start offering coverage to future retirees in 2023, they’ll do exactly what private plans are already doing in the Medicare Advantage program: cherry pick the healthiest applicants and leave sicker, more expensive beneficiaries in traditional Medicare. Mechanisms that prevent companies from skimming from the top — what wonks call “risk adjustment” — are imperfect, and so it’s likely that traditional Medicare would have to raise premiums to make up the difference.

This is where things can spiral out of control. Higher premiums encourage healthier beneficiaries who are still in traditional Medicare to opt into the private coverage, increasing costs even higher. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ (CBPP) Paul Van de Water observes, “over time, traditional Medicare would become less financially viable and could unravel — not because it was less efficient than the private plans, but because it was competing on an unlevel playing field in which private plans captured the healthier beneficiaries and incurred lower costs as a result.”

As the size of the Medicare population shrinks, “administrative costs would rise relative to benefit payments, traditional Medicare’s power to demand lower payment rates from providers would erode, and providers would have less incentive to participate in the program. As a result, people now age 55 and older might well face higher premiums and cost sharing for traditional Medicare, a more limited choice of providers, or both.”

In November, Californians will vote on Proposition 37, a requirement to label genetically engineered foods, a prospect the pesticide and processed food industries are not happy about. According to an analysis of campaign finance reports by Right To Know, an advocacy group promoting the ballot initiative, chemical and processed food companies recently contributed nearly $10 million to “No on 37,” which describes itself as “a coalition of family farmers, grocers, small businesses, and food producers” against food labeling.

Funding from pesticide and seed companies now tops $7 million, with the biggest contributions from Dupont Pioneer, Bayer Cropscience and BASF Plant Science. Genetically engineered crops are designed to be resistant to toxic pesticides and herbicides patented by these companies. But the resistant seeds have spurred the growth of “superweeds,” which require even more herbicide. In 2008, GE crop acres required over 26 percent more pounds of herbicides per acre than acres planted to conventional varieties. It’s not just the weeds that are mutating — “superinsects” are also starting to become a serious problem. Chemical companies profit enormously from this GE arms race, which gives farmers little choice but to buy bigger, more poisonous batches of pesticides and new strains of seeds engineered to withstand them.

Besides the chemical industry, companies including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestle USA, General Mills and ConAgra are pouring money into defeating the labeling requirement. If California passes the measure, these companies’ profits could suffer from a warning label driving consumers away. Proposition 37 could also take the GMO-labeling movement national, which has so far stalled in 20 states in spite of support from 91 percent of Americans. The Food and Drug Administration has said labels are unnecessary because GE foods have not been shown to be harmful. Many other countries, including Japan, Australia, China and the European Union, already require labels on GE food.

Mitt Romney described the Medicare cuts included in Paul Ryan’s budget as “extraordinary,” during his visit to a mining operation in Beallsville, Ohio on Tuesday — just days after his campaign claimed that he would have signed the reductions into law as part of the Ryan blueprint.

The Medicare reductions have become a political lightning rod since Romney named Ryan to the ticket on Saturday. The Affordable Care Act reduces future Medicare spending by $716 between 2013 and 2022 and Ryan maintains the savings in his Medicare proposal. The Romney campaign, however, has tried to gloss over the similarity and attack the president for approving reductions that the Republican runningmate also supports.

On Tuesday morning, following a barrage of questions from reporters, Romney campaign chair John Sununu announced that Romney would not cut Medicare in the next decade and the candidate himself pledged to restore the funding while stumping in Ohio. Watch it:

The campaign’s new “no cuts to Medicare” position significantly complicates Romney’s pledge to hold federal spending at 20 percent of GDP by 2016 and his promise to balance the budget at the end of his second term. It also contradicts what Romney told reporters in Miami on Monday.

Just a day after Mitt Romney told reporters, “my plan for Medicare is very similar to [Paul Ryan's] plan for Medicare,” former New Hampshire governor and Romney campaign chair John Sununu insisted on Tuesday morning that the former Massachusetts governor’s vision form Medicare reform is “very different” from Ryan’s proposal.

During a contentious appearance on CNN’s Starting Point, Sununu accused President Obama of stealing $716 billion from Medicare and insisted that Romney would protect the program. Asked to outline the differences between Romney’s campaign proposal and Ryan’s budget, Sununu admitted that Ryan maintains Obamacare’s reductions to Medicare — which he incorrectly argued would cut existing benefits — while Romney does not:

O’BRIEN: Let’s read then what comes out of Mitt Romney.com, which I have right here. Key elements of Mitt’s plan, nothing changes for current seniors. Medicare is reformed as a premium support system… it sounds awfully like the Paul Ryan Medicare plan.

SUNUNU: But it’s very different. For example, when Obama gutted Medicare by taking $717 billion out of it, the Romney plan does not do that. The Ryan plan mimicked part of the Obama package there. The Romney plan does not. That’s a big difference.

Watch it:

Sununu’s acknowledgment that Ryan preserves the $716 billion in Medicare savings complicates a Republican messaging campaign to use the ACA’s Medicare reductions as an “offensive” strategy against attacks on the Ryan budget. Romney accused Obama of gutting the program on Sunday, during an interview with CBS, as Ryan looked on.

Romney, incidentally, would have to cut as much as $2 trillion from Medicare to meet his goal of balancing the budget by the end of his second term.