A guest column published by Kaiser Health News points out an interesting (and largely undiscussed) feature of Congressman Paul Ryan’s hot-button Medicare plan : It ignores differences in Medicare costs between regions, and as a result it could “expose the egregious amount of money Medicare wastes in many parts of the country .” # Under Ryan’s proposal, seniors would receive a flat-rate voucher that would help them buy private insurance — regardless of where they live. As this map shows, Medicare expenses vary widely in different parts of the country, and even between neighboring cities. # In Florida, for example, an insurance voucher worth $8,000 would have covered the average patient in the Tallahassee region, where Medicare patients spent an average of $7,579 in 2007, the most recent year for which data are available.