Medicare reform
It may not be the best move politically, but it’s refreshing to again see somebody in Congress attempt to address runaway entitlement spending.
Let’s hope Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Richard Burr, R-N.C., don’t meet the usual resistance.
For years, Democrats have essentially ignored the entitlement issue as Medicare and Social Security devoured more and more of the federal budget and pushed the nation closer to insolvency. President Barack Obama turned a deaf ear to recommendations from his own bipartisan deficit commission on the matter — and he pretends the problem doesn’t exist at all in his most recent excuse for a budget blueprint.
Instead, Democrats prefer to let Republicans venture onto the entitlement battlefield, where they become easy targets for progressive grenades launched in an effort to scare seniors into thinking they’ll soon lose their Social Security checks or be sent to Tijuana for medical experiments if the status quo doesn’t prevail.
Witness what happened a decade ago when Republicans and President George W. Bush proposed allowing individuals to invest a small portion of their Social Security contributions in private accounts. Witness what happened last year when Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., proposed modest Medicare fixes only to be portrayed as a deranged misanthrope dumping granny out of her wheelchair and off a cliff.
Now come Sens. Coburn and Burr with a Medicare plan. It includes many proposals endorsed by Mr. Obama’s very own deficit panel, including higher premiums for wealthy seniors. It would also raise the eligibility age to 67 and create a system in which seniors have the option of enrolling in private plans that would compete with the government program.
The senators estimate that the measure could save up to $500 billion over the next decade.
“All of us in Congress are running around fixing everything except our biggest problem,” Sen. Coburn said. “If you don’t start fixing Medicare now, you can’t save it.”
The devil, of course, is in the details. But very soon, our elected officials in Washington must muster the courage to act on this vital issue, or they risk being responsible for the inevitable collapse.
To that end, this proposal deserves more than the predictable hissing and cat calls.