Abstract

Killing Medicare

The author suggests that the Medicare "reform" legislation just passed by Congress sends the program on a path to destruction. Crafted in the heady days of the Great Society, Medicare has worked reasonably well for almost four decades for seniors and disabled Americans, many of whom are unable to buy health coverage in the private market. But the nation's financial commitment to Medicare--$224 billion in 2000--got in the way of the right's ideological goals of reducing the cost of government and making people fend for themselves. So nearly a decade ago right-wing politicians and their allies at the Heritage Foundation embarked on a campaign to transform Medicare into a private insurance program and ultimately to remove the government from the business of guaranteeing healthcare for the oldest and sickest citizens. The new law lays the foundation for cutting benefits and increasing the amount of money beneficiaries will pay for care. The right knew it could never get control of Medicare's expenditures by overtly cutting benefits and raising premiums, so embedded in the legislation are provisions that give cover for doing exactly that. The repercussions from this legislation will be felt years from now when seniors and the disabled realize that they can't pay for their healthcare. Couple that with the prospect of less retirement income as employers shed their pension plans and the right begins to push hard for privatizing Social Security, and a picture emerges of impoverished elderly people like those seen before Medicare was phased in, in 1965.