The indispensible Heritage Foundation has a good takedown of the Medicare efforts in the Senate and the House. These bills create a situation in which drug costs will spiral out of control, where medical bills will only increase for all Americans, and a new unaccountable bureaucracy would be created. The prescription drug benefit to Medicare will only increase prices for those on private insurance, while decreasing the ability of drug companies to research and develop new cures for diseases.
A sensible plan for reform would be based on the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, which sets a minimum set of criteria for private agencies providing health care to government programs. Such a plan allows for competition, lower costs, and a better range of benefits.
Instead, the Republican Party that ostensibly stands for limited and responsible government has created a new system that will only grow the federal government at a destructive rate. The short-term partisan interests inherent in the Medicare "reform" bills in the House and the Senate (although the House bill is less egregious) will only hurt future generations by saddling them with higher costs for healthcare, fewer new drugs, and another expansive, irresponsible, and wasteful government bureaucracy.
Supporting this Medicare expansion works politically for the GOP in pursuit of short-term gain (i.e. the 2004 elections)and will work in the long-term by accelerating the pace of the program’s bankruptcy. Republicans have been fighting tooth and nail to get rid of Medicare before its inception and ever since. Starting in 1981, they realized the best way to destroy Medicare is by bankrupting the country, which of course will bankrupt Medicare and every other social program that government pays for. From the perspective of Republican partisan politicking, it’s a great move. From the perspective of maintaining a civilized economy….not so good. I’m noticing a trend of those two ideals conflicting.
I have never met a Republican politician who wants to get rid of Medicare entirely. That is certainly not the goal. A system based on the FEHBP would be a system that would provide quality medical care to those who need it at an affordable cost. It’s unfortunate that the Republican leadership is capitulating by crafting yet another policy that would only restrict free choice for medical care.
Medicare as a system can be made more efficient by reducing bureaucracy and allowing for greater freedom of choice. More restrictions and bureaucracies will only hurt Medicare’s longterm prospects.