NY Times - "Republicans and Medicare" by Paul Krugman

[TomCADem]

This column just illustrates the amazing disservice done by the corporate media in giving Republicans a platform to denounce health care reform as an attack on Medicare. Rarely did anyone in the media note the Republican's historical opposition to Medicare. Yet, not long after denouncing health care reform as a government takeover Medicare, the Republicans are again quietly laying the ground work for another attack following the 2010 elections. Contract for America, Part II anyone?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/opinion/12krugman.html

What I’m talking about here is the “Roadmap for America’s Future,” the budget plan recently released by Representative Paul Ryan, the ranking Republican member of the House Budget Committee. Other leading Republicans have been bobbing and weaving on the official status of this proposal, but it’s pretty clear that Mr. Ryan’s vision does, in fact, represent what the G.O.P. would try to do if it returns to power.

The broad picture that emerges from the “roadmap” is of an economic agenda that hasn’t changed one iota in response to the economic failures of the Bush years. In particular, Mr. Ryan offers a plan for Social Security privatization that is basically identical to the Bush proposals of five years ago. But what’s really worth noting, given the way the G.O.P. has campaigned against health care reform, is what Mr. Ryan proposes doing with and to Medicare.

In the Ryan proposal, nobody currently under the age of 55 would be covered by Medicare as it now exists. Instead, people would receive vouchers and be told to buy their own insurance. And even this new, privatized version of Medicare would erode over time because the value of these vouchers would almost surely lag ever further behind the actual cost of health insurance. By the time Americans now in their 20s or 30s reached the age of eligibility, there wouldn’t be much of a Medicare program left.

* * *

The bottom line, then, is that the crusade against health reform has relied, crucially, on utter hypocrisy: Republicans who hate Medicare, tried to slash Medicare in the past, and still aim to dismantle the program over time, have been scoring political points by denouncing proposals for modest cost savings — savings that are substantially smaller than the spending cuts buried in their own proposals.

[PHIMG]

1. dems need to stop playing defense and go on OFFENSE

expand medicare to save medicare.

eliminate the wasteful, inefficient, abusive for-profit middlemen that CAUSED our health care crisis.

private health insurance must go!

Medicare - good enough for grandma good enough for EVERYONE.

[TomCADem]

2. By Dems, Are You Referring To Elected Democrats Or To All Democrats?

I agree with your take, but I think the mistake we sometimes make is that we can passively sit back and complain, rather than get involved ourselves.