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Medicare Reform Dead: Barnes
Fred Barnes, of the Weekly Standard, credits Sen. Ted Kennedy with being "wise" in his handling of the proposal to add prescription drugs to Medicare. By "wise," Barnes means that Kennedy "has figured out how to get what he wants. And what Kennedy wants is to kill, or at least forestall, the privatization of Medicare.
Would-be Medicare reforms once had the leverage of holding the proposal to add prescription drugs (currently not covered) hostage to a series of reforms that would promote consumer, rather than bureaucratic control and responsibility. For some reason, President Bush and others have decided to add a prescription drug benefit to the creaky Medicare system with no significant reform.It calculates that 48 percent of Medicare recipients would jump to private insurance under the bill, which was negotiated by Chairman Charles Grassley of the Senate Finance Committee under the watchful eye of majority leader Bill Frist. After all that attrition, old-fashioned, government-run Medicare would gradually fade away. Kennedy and conservative opponents don't believe this, and neither does the Congressional Budget Office, which says no more than 12 percent would jump to private plans. The administration originally demanded a strong incentive for seniors to switch: They wouldn't get the drug benefit unless they did. But this provision has been jettisoned. Now seniors would get the benefit either way.
Kennedy would have liked to have noinvolvement of private plans, but is willing to let them in, to change things later.
So once again, the Republicans have walked away from their stated principles.
(permalink)
"Justice Louis D. Brandeis'?s metaphor of the states as "laboratories" for policy experiments ... had almost nothing to do with federalism and everything to do with his commitment to scientific socialism. .... To this day, it continues to inhibit a truly experimental, federalist politics." -- Michael S. Greve
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