Medicare and the GOP

Bruce Bartlett, normally a very reliable political analyst, weighs in on purported Republican demagoguery on National Healthcare in their attempts to turn senior citizens against the Democrat's plans.

The upshot for him is the biggest flip-flop of a political party "since the Democrats went from being the party of Southern racists for 150 years to being the party of civil rights in the 1960s." Republicans, long opponents of entitlement programs of every stripe, but Medicare in particular, are now the Party that believes "that Medicare must be protected at all cost," and are using this new position to club the Democrats who are trying to impose some cuts in this near bankrupt entitlement program.

Mr. Bartlett believes Republicans have lost a golden opportunity to reign in the Medicare Behemoth by making "Democrats do the heavy lifting on getting Medicare under control." And by failing to seize this opportunity, Republicans have insured that when the time comes for "fundamental Medicare reform" that they will "unquestionably ... face unified Democratic opposition."

To which I respond, that's some bold prognostication. In fact, I can say with a reliability of about 110% that no matter what the Republicans might do this political season, no matter how bad the fiscal situation becomes with Medicare, even to the point of bankruptcy of the United States, Republicans will unquestionably face unified Democratic opposition to fundamental Medicare reform.

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Beyond the obviousness of his conclusion, however, Mr. Bartlett's error is in forgetting the fundamental problem with Medicare entitlement in the first place. He rightly tells us that Republicans opposed Medicare in the 1960's, at least in part, because of a concern that it was a first step onto a slippery slope towards the nationalization of healthcare, which in turn would lead America into Socialism and over the cliff into Totalitarianism. But he then puts all of this aside to argue that "Democrats want universal coverage badly and are willing to pay a lot to get it. Republicans could have used this desire to get Democratic cover for fundamental Medicare reform."

There's an idea. Republicans should give the Democrats universal healthcare in order to reform Medicare. Mr. Bartlett is in essence counseling us to leap past the slippery slope and go directly to nationalized healthcare, where we can then take our satisfaction in slapping around the original camel's nose of government healthcare, Medicare.

This is perverse. In fact, the most important political point to make in all of this is that Democrats are not the grand defenders of the Elderly of their rhetoric. At the first real opportunity to get National Healthcare, they are more than willing to throw Medicare and the Elderly under the bus, cynically and with cold-blooded intention. For Republicans, this is not a golden opportunity to "think strategically and negotiate with Democrats in good faith," but to high-light the fundamental callousness of Democrats, and separate them from one of their more knee-jerk (and important) constituencies.

Conservatives do not like Medicare or Social Security, nor any other entitlement that serves to confuse citizens about the role of government in American society. But Conservatives appreciate the fact that over the years American citizens have fashioned their lives in reasonable expectation of the continuation of these government benefits. It would be a betrayal of trust for Government at this point to take away these programs.

It is for this reason that Conservatives are actually the ones the public should trust more to save Medicare and Social Security. This was shown nowhere more clearly than when Ronald Reagan went against all his most cherished principles and raised Social Security taxes rather than let it go bankrupt. Mr. Bartlett mentions this, but sees it only as a betrayal of Republican principles. As in most of his essay, he completely misses the point.

The Elderly need to understand that the Democrats care more about maintaining their own political power through demagoguery over Medicare than they do about insuring that Medicare is a viable program over the long haul. They will continue this game if need be right up until Medicare - and America itself - goes bankrupt, arrogantly sure that they will survive such a fiasco for the Elderly the same way they have survived the failure of so many of their Big Government initiatives.

And I think the Elderly are starting to understand this. That's why Republicans are right in their approach and Mr. Bartlett is wrong. The Republican's mantra is and should be, "We want to save Medicare (and Social Security)!" albeit on terms that will actually make these programs sustainable.

This would be a winning political formula. And, as Richard Nixon once said, "It has the added advantage of being the truth."