Ending Medicare As We Know It

I’m probably going to vote for Obama this year. It’s mostly, I confess, a vote against Republicanism: that shameless (and to me loathsome) brand of politics that ignores the fact that Republicans created the mess they now pretend to despise, that they spent three years preventing Democrats from doing anything about it, and now campaign as if they are the ones who will “Save America.” It is so staggeringly hypocritical that it would be laughable if it didn’t look like they might get away with it..

But I can’t say I am any longer much of a fan of Barak Obama. He has been a disappointment. I credit him with taking a first stab at dealing with the health care mess, but even there the focus was mostly on coverage rather than costs, which I believe to be the cause of the coverage problem. But still, he got us a bit closer, I think, to a solution.

Beyond that, it’s hard to see what he did with all the advantages he had – and to an extent still has. His lack of success is not all his fault, of course., but in the end the buck stops there: he had the chance, he had the power and momentum, and yet could do little with it. The result is that he is now running a truly awful campaign, a campaign in which we are told over and over (for example) that Ryan budget plan would “end Medicare as we know it.” Is that supposed to be a bad thing? Medicare “as we know it” MUST end. It is bankrupting America. We have got to find a way make Medicare and Medicaid and medical costs generally, manageable. Obama, of all people knows that. But he has chosen, for political ends, to hammer away at a slogan that has no purpose other than to scare people and that will only make coming up with a solution even more difficult. Alas, the politics of hope.