The Future of Medicare Is the Future of Health Care

Of the millions of words written and spoken about U.S. health care, only a tiny percentage have been about Medicare. So far, stump speeches and media coverage boil down, on the Democratic side, to whose health proposal covers more people, and, for GOP candidates, who will not embrace that American bugaboo, "socialized medicine." Medicare, which covers more than forty million seniors and people with disabilities, seems to be off limits, even though there's plenty to talk about. The scant coverage of Medicare that does exist is cryptic, code-like, and assumes that the public knows the ins and outs of one of the government's most complicated programs.

This is unfortunate because the future of Medicare may well tell us what kind of health care all of America will eventually have. Will we conquer budget challenges and find a way to continue Medicare as a successful social insurance program? Or will we privatize the program to mirror the rest of the U.S. health insurance system, with its holes and shortcomings?

A New York Times CBS News poll in December found that less than one percent of respondents thought Medicare and Medicaid were the most important problems facing the country, a stat which raises a chicken and egg question. Do candidates think that people don't care about Medicare, justifying their silence, or do voters not yet care because the media (and the candidates) aren't telling them what's at stake?

Back in August, Hillary Clinton gave a speech in Iowa and briefly discussed Medicare, which she said faced significant financial challenges driven by the spiraling cost of health care. True enough. She told the gathering that the current president had not called for a national commitment to save Social Security and Medicare and that it was time "we talked about and confronted a lot of these issues." She described them as "invisible." True again. But neither Clinton, the other candidates, nor the media have done much to make them visible.

Mike Huckabee's words are puzzling. Right before Christmas, Huckabee talked to an Iowa woman who is dying from a progressive lung disease. When she asked him what he would do to change the national health care system, he responded that change must start with federal programs like Medicare and Medicaid. "If we don't set the model, then the rest of the industry doesn't move that way." But if Huckabee explained what model he had in mind, The Associated Press didn't tell us.

On the trail, Huckabee notes that Medicare obligations, if not "fixed," will lead to financial ruin, and quips, "Wait till all these aging hippies find out they'll get free drugs for the rest of their lives." Does he mean free LSD or free Lipitor? Medicare provides neither, but aging hippies might indeed want to know what kind of program Medicare will be five years from now -- one where everyone is entitled to a standard set of benefits or one where people must fish in the pond controlled by private insurance companies. The Medicare drug benefits, now sold by commerical insurers, moved in the latter direction.

Fred Thompson said he would cut Medicare for wealthy people like Warren Buffet. Does he really mean billionaires, or merely those with incomes higher than $80,000? (Right now single people with incomes greater than that pay higher premiums -- another step in the direction of privatization.) Does Thompson aim to destroy the universality of Medicare, which most experts believe contributes to the program's popularity and success? A Miami Herald story into this for readers, many of whom are already on Medicare and would presumbly want to know if they will lose benefits under a Thompson plan.

John Edwards started to talk about how the drug companies wrote the Medicare prescription drug law. "Why do we have that mess of a Medicare prescription drug law? The thing was written by drug company lobbyists. I was there..." A New York Times story cut off the rest of his remarks so we don't know, if he said anything, about how he would fight drug company opposition to negotiating prices with Medicare, a position he supports.