PD Editorial: A bipartisan take on fixing Medicare
Published: Friday, December 30, 2011 at 7:00 p.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, December 29, 2011 at 1:20 p.m.
Regular readers of this page know that we believe American politics would benefit from an infusion of bipartisanship and a renewed commitment to solving problems rather than exploiting them for short-term political gain.
So on this final day of another year characterized by partisan brawling (and economic turmoil), it’s a pleasure to sound an optimistic note.
Our subject, surprisingly enough, is Congress.
Yes, Congress. To borrow the trademark phrase of Santa Rosa’s own Robert Ripley, Believe It or Not!
Here’s the story: A conservative House Republican and a liberal Senate Democrat are working together on a plan intended to put Medicare on a sound financial footing.
There are promising elements to the proposal unveiled this month by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon. But what’s really promising here is that a Republican and a Democrat — respected legislators within their respective parties — are pursuing a common solution to a serious problem that all too frequently has been used to score political points.
Under the Ryan-Wyden plan, subsidies would be offered for older Americans who wanted to purchase private health insurance. That’s consistent with past GOP proposals, including the Ryan budget approved by the House earlier this year, to privatize Medicare.
Of course, that’s anathema to most Democrats. But this plan also preserves a traditional, defined-benefit Medicare program for those who want it. Call it a public option.
With this approach, private insurers would have to compete against one another as well as a government-run Medicare option to provide health care for older Americans.
To protect seniors from rising costs, Ryan and Wyden would guarantee that subsidies — dubbed “premium support” — would be large enough to cover private plans with benefits at least as comprehensive as those offered by traditional Medicare.
Competitive bidding is the intended mechanism for controlling costs.
Political experts note that premium support and competitive bidding are the key features of the health care reform plan pushed through Congress by President Barack Obama. The similarities are likely to shape the debate over Ryan-Wyden. So will the 2012 election.
Policy experts, meanwhile, point out that the Ryan-Wyden plan fails to address fraud and systemic inefficiencies that contribute mightily to rising costs.
But in the case of Medicare, perfect can’t be the enemy of good. And doing nothing simply isn’t an option.
With a growing population of citizens 65 and older, and increasing life expectancies, Medicare is a fiscal time bomb that could swallow the rest of the federal budget — or, just as devastating, it could collapse, leaving senior citizens without a safety net.
Medicare is a political minefield, and getting any changes through Congress will be a huge challenge. GOP legislators have alternately called for reforms and warned that Obama’s health care plan would undermine Medicare, while Democrats have benefitted politically from warning seniors that Republicans are out to kill Medicare.
But, as Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein noted in a review of Ryan-Wyden, “the fact of the matter is that Republicans want a competitive-bidding process with a public option in Medicare and Democrats want one for the under-65 set.”
Maybe there’s a bipartisan solution to be found. It’s something to talk about in 2012.
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