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The right side of history

Nick Kristof hammers critics of today's health-care reform proposals with the Medicare cudgel.

We're hearing the same arguments that were raised against Medicare back in the '60s, the NY Times columnist says. They were wrong then, which means they're wrong now.

Wait a minute. I'm not sure that's a logical conclusion.

Medicare was Medicare. The Pelosi-Reid health-care bills are something different.

Sure, some of the opposition to Medicare was irrational. It didn't turn the United States into the Soviet Union.

But critics who said, "You're selling us a bill of goods. This is going to cost a lot more than you're letting on, and someday it might break us," weren't wrong.

I see an analogy to the aquatic center brouhaha here in Greensboro. The voters agreed to pay for a certain amount only to learn later it's going to cost quite a bit more. Its proponents say, "What are you griping about? It doesn't matter how much it costs. It's going to be a great facility." OK, it's going to be a great facility. But could it be a little less great at a little less cost? Or at least, couldn't proponents have been more truthful about it from the start?

Sure, Medicare is a terrific program, but it's terrifically expensive. Honestly, does it really have to cover folks who are very wealthy and could afford to pay for their own medical care?

The irony, of course, is that today's congressional leaders pushing their health-care reform bills sell them as affordable -- and even claim they'll reduce the deficit -- because they will cut Medicare spending, somehow at some time in the future.

Anyone who says that's just plain old BS is brushed off as sounding just like those Medicare opponents back in the '60s.

Health-care reform ought to be just that -- reform. One of the goals was supposed to be cost-containment. We desperately need cost-containment because health care is gobbling up a massive portion of our GDP. So where's the cost-containment other than these promised Medicare cuts that, come on, are not likely to really materialize? Paperwork efficiencies? Sure. Reduce ER visits? Maybe some, but you'll still have millions of illegal immigrants with nowhere else to go.

Tax increases are slated to cover some of the anticipated costs, but that just transfers more wealth from the non-health-care sector of the economy into the health-care sector -- the opposite of what we ought to try to achieve.

Well, never mind. To be on "the right side of history," you have to vote for it -- even if you think most of its promises are hogwash or wishful thinking.

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Posted by Doug Clark on Friday, November 20, 2009 at 8:30 am

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tonymo

November 20, 2009 - 2:01 pm EST

Doug, the unfunded promises for Medicare total $78 TRILLION! To put that in some perspective that number for Social Security is a "mere" $16 TRILLION! Much of the proposed "savings" are supposed to come from Medicare. Does anyone think that will happen? Not in this lifetime.

If these disasters were even remotely viable they wouldn't have to be written behind closed doors, voted on in the middle of the night on Saturday within 60 seconds of receiving the 2000 page bills, especailly since this disaster don't even go into effect until 2014!!!!

If passed as written, this will absolutely be the end of free market Capitalism. It would be even if we didn't have the incredibly massive debt that we have. That, and not health care "reform" is the real goal of Socialist/Marxist wing of the Demo-Rat party. They want a massive central government that controls every aspect of our lives (including when women should get mammograms).

Andrew Brod

November 20, 2009 - 9:49 pm EST

Of course tonymo is wrong, and the less said about his hyperventilating fear-mongering the better.

But I hold Doug to a higher standard. And Doug, you're confusing two distinct issues. Yes, Medicare has structural funding challenges, but they're not due to its status as a government-run program. They're a function of the overall rate of health-care price inflation. If we control that, then all of a sudden Medicare's solvency is virtually assured. That's why Social Security has always been a smaller problem than Medicare. For Social Security, the problems are related to demographics, and those are relatively easily solvable. For Medicare, in contrast, the problems are related to demographics AND health-care costs, and it's the latter problems that are the harder nut to crack.

In any case, it's quite fair to compare the current critics to the forebears of tonymo. They were wrong about the costs of government running that program, and their descendants are wrong now.

Doug

November 20, 2009 - 10:42 pm EST

I'm not saying Medicare costs escalated beyond initial projections because it's a government program, just that they escalated beyond initial projects ... and maybe those projections weren't honest in the first place. And that may be the case today.

Medicare costs exceeded projections so quickly that it's hard to attribute them to medical inflation, unless the health-care system began to charge what the (Medicare) market would bear.

Medicare is certainly a good thing, but don't we devote a vastly disproportionate share of medical spending to the last year or so of life? Medicare makes that possible. Not saying that's a bad thing, but if we're serious about cost-containment ...

But then, we're not.