Once Medicare's foe, GOP now boosts it [a turn to the dark side for political expediency?]

AP ^ | 2009-09-08 | Beth Fouhy

[rabscuttle385]

NEW YORK (AP) — Weren't Republicans against Medicare before they were for it?

It's a question vexing Democrats in the fierce battle over President Barack Obama's push for a health care overhaul as the head of the Republican Party has portrayed the GOP as the lone bulwark preventing deep cuts to the popular, government-run health plan for older people.

It's a remarkable turnaround for a party whose leaders tried to slash billions from Medicare more than a decade ago and have assailed the program as a wasteful entitlement. None other than Ronald Reagan, a hero to Republicans, warned in 1961 that creation of Medicare would push the country toward socialism.

The new GOP posture may be politically savvy given older Americans' fears of major changes to Medicare, which were among the concerns widely on display at angry town hall meetings across the country last month. But the new stance also contradicts the party's long history of skepticism toward government-run programs and Republican concerns about the long-term viability and health of the Medicare system.

. . . . .

Conservatives for years have called Medicare a government takeover of a huge part of the economy.

"One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine," Reagan said in a 1961 television ad fighting the program's creation.

He added that if such a plan were enacted, "One of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free."

[rabscuttle385]

The GOP defending Socialism? LOL!

[Boucheau]

creation of Medicare would push the country toward socialism. - Reagan

Well, did it, or didn’t it?

[FlingWingFlyer]

We also just “Alinskyed” Van Jones. You just can’t trust us Republican communists! LOL!

[KC_Conspirator]

Beth Fouhy is a liar. Republicans are against Medicare because Obama wants to socialize all medicene. Thats it.

[kcvl]

Beth Fouhy former CNN - executive producer

She is also associated with Nedra Pickler, the MOST famous pro-Obama reporter at the AP. She is also associated with John Decker, who works for the Sacramento Bee

[lmr]

Conservatives aren’t in this fight to save Medicare.

With Democrat Control of Congress and the Executive Branch, we have simply adopted a philosophy of ‘containment.’ if it’s even possible. Our victories are only small because we aren’t really rolling back any Socialism, we don’t have the power. We are in the fight of our lives just to score little victories in the push for Marxist expansionism.

This article does put things into perspective. We still have to ally ourselves with demos that we historically have rejected or opposed.

We have a long way to go. We can only fight to see that our nation isn’t taken even further down this path towards totalitarianism.

We hope to retake part of government in 2010 but that will really be just the beginning for us in the preservation of this Republic.

Right now, it’s just tooth and nail to make sure it’s not all gone before then.

[paudio]

I see it as using a small fire to prevent the big fire.

[CharlesWayneCT]

We never wanted to slash medicare, which is of course a government-run program but which is paid for by people with their own taxes.

We did want to privatize it, to make it more efficient, to eventually get people to contribute to a private version that would cost less and remove government from it. But we never wanted to cut seniors off from it.

That was a lie told by the democrats, which has now become gospel; that it was a lie makes them all “shocked” now that we aren’t living up to their lie.

[ModelBreaker]

This is a fair criticism. The rats have been successfully demagogueing social security for decades. R’s are now doing the same for medicare.

I don’t like it. But if it’s the only way to prevent socialized medicine from being shoved everyone’s throats, I’ll demagogue the crap out of it. That keeps the damage by the government limited to medicare—hard to fix, but it’s better than having to fix the damage Obama is fixin’ to do to all of health care.

[Frantzie]

Good post. the Dems with Hussein DeathCare have burned their bridges with seniors who are not senile union types.

Baby boomers - if they are paying attention - need to realize that their red or blue pill meeting with the Govt DeathCare ACRON/SEIU govt goon would only be a decade down the road.

Seniors and Baby Boomers need to wake up because Hussein wants you to die faster so illegals can get your benefits and with higher estate taxes - they will grab your retirement money too.

[rabscuttle385]

That keeps the damage by the government limited to medicare

I disagree.

Defending Medicare in its current form further damages the credibility of the Republican Party on entitlement reform only to apply a political band-aid to a spurting jugular. The growing costs of Medicare, Social Security, and other entitlement programs constitute a disease that could ultimately render the Federal government insolvent and thus unable to execute its functions, even those that are legitimate and proper under the Constitution.

The proper solution for Medicare, and one that could be adapted to Social Security, would include ending new enrollments (as well as the corresponding payroll tax); offering partial buyouts (e.g., non-taxable funds to maintain a privately-run HDHP and HSA for a set number of years or a lump sum, non-taxable distribution that is a set percentage of the individual's original tax payments) to those Americans presently enrolled in the system; and treatment of Medicare obligations as general obligations of the Federal government payable from its general funds (i.e., no more of this "trust fund" shell game BS).

Someone has to turn the lights on, so to speak. It will be much easier to put the Federal government on a diet and exercise plan if the electorate actually knows how obese it has become...on the watch of both parties.

[dr_who]

The MSM returns to its tactics from the 2004 and 2008 elections and Republican honeymoon period in early ‘95: if you can’t attack the Republicans from the left, attack them from the right.

[dr_who]

Kind of makes you wonder what the effectiveness of the AP’s propaganda is here. What small-government conservative gives a rat’s rear what the AP says these days?

[fours]

Defending Medicare in its current form further damages the credibility of the Republican Party on entitlement reform only to apply a political band-aid to a spurting jugular. The growing costs of Medicare, Social Security, and other entitlement programs constitute a disease that could ultimately render the Federal government insolvent and thus unable to execute its functions, even those that are legitimate and proper under the Constitution.

The proper solution for Medicare, and one that could be adapted to Social Security, would include ending new enrollments (as well as the corresponding payroll tax); offering partial buyouts (e.g., non-taxable funds to maintain a privately-run HDHP and HSA for a set number of years or a lump sum, non-taxable distribution that is a set percentage of the individual's original tax payments) to those Americans presently enrolled in the system; and treatment of Medicare obligations as general obligations of the Federal government payable from its general funds (i.e., no more of this "trust fund" shell game BS).

Cool, very thoughtful comment, lots of points here! I agree that having Michael Steele & other big GOP types going around pledging to "protect Medicare" undermines the GOP & angers the conservative base on entitlement reform, and that these entitlements are only going to get more expensive for our country as baby boomers retire.

But how do you incentivize private insurers to enter the business of insuring old people today? In the last decade my grandparents were alive, I can recall them measuring out dozens of pills into weekly prescription cases -- and this was before pharmaceutical research costs & drug prices went up so much as they have recently. I can't see anything but a government free-money giveaway to private insurers to motivate them to pick up the tab for the elderly now (buyouts as you call them?).

What I've read by the Cato Institute, etc on this issue usually are about clean-slate designs that acknowledge current Medicare recipients are basically screwed if they lost their benefits now and had to buy private again. "Health-status insurance" (interesting idea, check it out) is supposed to help if your premiums go up as you age, but not if you're already aged. Perhaps if children of the elderly were allowed to extend their coverage to their parents, we might have something ...

I recall when a family friend retired (with a corporate pension) about 10 years ago, I heard that he'd somehow bought health insurance from his previous employer that covered him, his wife and child for the rest of his life (and I guess only until his child became an adult?) for >$100k. I thought that sounded crazy at the time, but now I guess it was pretty smart..

[Man50D]

Our victories are only small because we aren’t really rolling back any Socialism, we don’t have the power.

We must roll back socialism and are in the process because we do have the power. Congress critters want people to believe they have the power. Failure to exert our power is failure to restore those powers our founding fathers intended to grant to the people through the Constitution.

[dcwusmc]

“Failure to exert our power is failure to restore those powers our founding fathers intended to grant to the people through the Constitution.”

The Founders GRANTED us NOTHING. They (and we, through them) GRANTED GOVERNMENT some very limited authority to do certain things in our names and on our behalf. POWER NOT GRANTED TO GOVERNMENT WAS (and is) RETAINED BY the people. I agree, power not used is power lost, but all power in this nation flows from the People TO the government in VERY LIMITED amounts. We merely need to turn off that spigot and fire our employees, by whatever means prove needful.

[lmr]

We don’t have the votes to roll back anything that already exists. This is what I meant.

There is already plenty of existing Socialism that we need to scrap, but can’t because we don’t control Congress. So, we are powerless there.

I wholeheartedly agree that we have the power to make the political cost high for anyone that votes for more Socialism, though.

I was merely trying to illustrate how far we have to go. Even if we do stop most of this, they will still add a few increments which may never get rolled back and we certainly won’t cut into that Socialism which already exists.