My word, how things have changed. Ryan McNeely, co-blogging with Matthew Yglesias, proudly brandishes a Center for American Progress memo detailing how the new healthcare law will save substantial taxpayer dollars by slowing the growth of Medicare.
“Slow the growth”: Savor that phrase as we take a ride in the wayback machine, when a newly-elected Republican Congress had proposed the Medicare Preservation Act as part of its plan to balance the federal budget in seven years.
[Check out our editorial cartoons on healthcare.]
Responding to Clinton White House charges of “draconian consequences,” then-Speaker Newt Gingrich explained, with characteristic exasperation, that “slowing the growth” was not the same thing as cutting:
After seven years under the Republican plan ... the government would wind up spending an average of $6,700 a year for every senior, compared to the $4,800-a-year average now spent. Republicans, Gingrich said, were not cutting anything for the elderly.
“Is that a plus or a minus?” he asked. “I’ll go anywhere in the country, in front of any audience, and debate that.”
Is this to say I wasn’t enormously disappointed by 2009-vintage Republicans’ attacks on the Affordable Care Act’s reductions in Medicare growth? Of course not. But I can’t help but find it comical to watch today’s self-described progressives railing at Medicare demagoguery and boasting about long-term deficit reduction.
I suppose this is progress, of a sort.
- Check out our editorial cartoons on healthcare.
- See which members of Congress get the most from the health services industry.
- See a slide show of 10 things that are (and aren’t) in the healthcare bill.
Reader Comments Read all comments (2)
jerry of NY 11:16AM July 15, 2010
Steven Riback of NJ 10:02PM July 01, 2010