Ross Douthat argues that Republican rhetoric over health care reform misses the point and ignores the fast-approaching Medicare crisis:
Conservatives have marshaled various briefs against the Democratic health care proposals. They’ve argued that the plans will be too expensive, that they’ll cramp innovation and raise premiums for the already-insured, that they’ll encourage employers to drop coverage and discourage them from hiring.
These arguments have been effective, up to a point. But they aren’t nearly as effective as warning senior citizens that Barack Obama wants to take away their health care.
That’s why Republicans find themselves tiptoeing into an unfamiliar role — as champions of old-age entitlements. The Democrats are “sticking it to seniors with cuts to Medicare,” Mitch McConnell declared. They want to “cannibalize” the program to pay for reform, John Cornyn complained. It’s a “raid,” Sam Brownback warned, that could result in the elderly losing “necessary care.”
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Medicare’s price tag, if trends continue, will make a mockery of the idea of limited government. For conservatives, no fiscal cause is more important than curbing this exponential growth. And by fighting health care reform with tactics ripped from Democratic playbooks, and enlisting anxious seniors as foot soldiers, conservatives are setting themselves up to win the battle and lose the longer war.
Maybe Republicans will be able to cast themselves as the protectors of entitlements today, and then impose their own even more sweeping reforms tomorrow. That’s the playbook that McConnell, Brownback and others seem to have in mind: first, save Medicare from Obama; then, save Medicare from itself.
But for now, their strategy means the country suddenly has two political parties devoted to Mediscaring seniors — which in turn seems likely to make the program more untouchable than ever.
And if you think reform is tough today, just wait. We’re already practically a gerontocracy: Americans over 50 cast over 40 percent of the votes in the 2008 elections, and half the votes in the ’06 midterms. As the population ages — by 2030, there will be more Americans over 65 than under 18 — the power of the elderly and nearly elderly may become almost absolute.
In this future, somebody will need to stand for the principle that Medicare can’t pay every bill and bless every procedure. Somebody will need to defend the younger generation’s promise (and its pocketbooks). Somebody will need to say “no” to retirees.
Instead of making that argument, though, Republicans in general and conservatives in particular have seized on the idea of health-care reform that includes cuts in Medicare for the political advantage it provides them, despite the fact the long-term damage that the Medicare status quo does to the country.
