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Human Events...
A Democrat Reaches
Across the Aisle on Medicare
by Michael Barone
12/19/2011
It’s highly unusual in a presidential debate for two Republican
candidates -- the two leading in current national polls -- to heap
praise on a liberal Democratic senator.
But in the Fox News debate in Sioux City, Iowa, Thursday night, both
Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney had very good words to say for Oregon’s
Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden.
The subject was the Medicare reform plan put forward in a Wall Street
Journal opinion article that morning by Wyden and House Budget
Committee Chairman Paul Ryan.
“Today is a big day for the country,” Romney said. It was “an enormous
achievement” for Ryan and Wyden, people on opposite sides of the aisle,
to come together.
Gingrich, harshly criticized last May for calling Ryan’s earlier
Medicare plan “right-wing social engineering,” went out of his way to
say that Romney had produced “a very good plan” for Medicare and that
it was “brave” for Wyden to join Ryan in their bipartisan plan.
Politicians’ praise is sometimes bestowed overlavishly, but in this
case it was well merited. Ryan-Wyden represents a major step forward in
public policy and gives hope that the Medicare entitlement can be
rendered sustainable.
The Ryan-Wyden proposal provides for continuation of the current
Medicare program for those now over age 55. For those younger, it would
introduce in 2022 a “premium-support” system that would allow Medicare
recipients to choose between the current program and a
Medicare-approved private plan.
Those plans would be presented in competitive bidding and would have to
be as comprehensive as traditional Medicare and would have to accept
anyone who applied. There would be subsidies for low-income seniors.
Private insurers would thus have an incentive to design plans that
would offer more generous benefits and lower costs than current
Medicare. This kind of market competition has proved effective in the
Medicare Part D prescription drug program enacted in 2003. Costs have
been lower than government projections, and beneficiary satisfaction
has been high.
Ryan-Wyden differs from the Medicare plan Ryan presented last spring by
offering the option of keeping the current Medicare system. That is
also a feature of the Medicare proposals of candidates Romney and
Gingrich.
Wyden, with a solidly liberal voting record, may seem to be an unlikely
partner in this enterprise. But he has consistently favored adding
elements of market competition to our health care system.
He was one of the relatively few Democrats who provided necessary
support for Part D in 2003. And in 2008, he and Republican Sen. Bob
Bennett of Utah put forward a health care proposal based on eliminating
the current tax preference for employer-provided health insurance.
That preference creates incentives to increase costs, and health policy
experts of both left and right have argued for its elimination. But
Barack Obama gave Wyden-Bennett the back of his hand and supported a
plan that would centralize control in the federal government.
The Obama White House was quick to reject Ryan-Wyden, as well. While
Obama has said on occasion that the current Medicare program is not
sustainable in the long term, he is now firmly in campaign mode and
uninterested in anything other than bashing Republicans for hurting
seniors.
Ryan-Wyden makes this kind of cheap-shot politics more difficult. And
it comes when a recent poll showed that only 29 percent of voters --
less than one in three -- support the Obamacare legislation. So it’s no
surprise that Obama prefers Mediscare tactics to defending his
administration’s largest legislative accomplishment.
The Republican candidates are united in their determination to repeal
Obamacare, and repeal is a realistic possibility if Republicans should
sweep the 2012 elections as they did in 2010. Ryan-Wyden also renders
long-term Medicare reform a realistic possibility.
Ryan-Wyden helps to frame the health care issue in the presidential
election as a choice between big government control and market
competition. That does not help Obama.
Gallup reports that 64 percent of Americans regard big government, as
opposed to big business or big labor, as “the biggest threat to the
country in the future.” That’s just one point under the all-time high
since Gallup began asking the question in 1965.
So it’s not surprising that Romney and Gingrich saw fit to praise Wyden
and that other Democrats are angry with him. But Wyden shows that at
least one Democrat, even in campaign season, is more interested in good
public policy than in politics.
Read this and other columns at Human
Events
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