Kausfiles: A mostly political weblog.

Why I Like the Senate Health Compromise

Is the proposed Medicare buy-in a stalking horse for ...: I've always liked the idea of a Medicare buy-in for those 55-65, now part of the proposed Senate health deal. Why? Because Medicare is an accepted and successful program. Also because

1) if the "buy-in" is unsubsidized, the new 55-65s will be paying much higher premiums for Medicare than the already-in 65+ crowd, whose premiums are subsidized by the Medicare portion of the Social Security payroll tax.**

2) Eventually these younger Medicare enrollees will start to complain to their Congressmen, "Why am I paying $550 a month when these old geezers pay so much less--even though they are bigger risks?"

3) Eventually, Congress will be forced to adjust the two premiums to bring them closer to parity--i.e. force to raise the premium on older Medicare recipients;

4) But that means many older Medicare recipients will be too poor to pay the increased bill. They will have to get subsidies;

5) Once these subsidies are accepted, there will be less reason not to raise Medicare premiums even further on the more affluent 65 recipients, while protecting the non-affluent with the subsidies;

6) Eventually, rich 65+ recipients might pay something close to the full cost of the Medicare insurance they are getting;

7) What's the phrase they use for a government program in which the rich get little or no benefit but the poor get full benefits, with those in the middle getting middle-sized benefits. ... Oh, right: Means-testing. The Medicare buy-in looks like a back door route to means testing what will be the most expensive part of Social Security.. ...

Since means-testing is probably what we will need to save Social Security's solvency--at least it is for those of us who don't think Orszag & Co. are going to be able to bend the cost curve without degrading medical care--I'm for the Medicare-buy in. ...

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**-- That's true even before you consider the possible effect of "adverse selection" on premiums--i.e., if the sickest of the 55-65 year olds are the ones who gravitate toward Medicare's security, driving up its premiums, while the healthiest decide not to pay them and stay in the "private" insurance market. ... 8:18 P.M.

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Paul Kirk's Thoughtcrime

I've always been sympathetic to Paul Kirk since a Los Angeles reporters' breakfast in 1985 where he proposed "means-testing" Social Security benefits--that is, scaling them back for those who didn't need them. This was, and is, a forbidden thought among mainstream Democrats, who argue that the strength of New Deal entitlements is that they're available equally to rich and poor.*** Senator Edward Kennedy, whose seat Kirk has just been named to fill, had a few months earlier gone out of his way to subtly denounce the idea as an attempt to "repeal the New Deal and the New Frontier."

Kirk's subsequent s**t-eating recantation was comically, almost self-defeatingly, transparent. By bedtime on the same day, he put out a statement declaring: "I was wrong. Our party ... is unalterably opposed to any cuts in Social Security benefits. I should not have mentioned the subject of a means test. I plan to undergo electroshock therapy to insure that this idea never again appears within my cerebral cortex without producing immediate nausea and revulsion." [E.A.]

OK, he didn't say that last sentence. But he said the one before it. ...

The incident is reported in a 1985 L.A. Times story. ...

***-- A fine sentiment, until you go broke. ... 1:02 P.M.

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BREAKING: The person who was the Former NEA Director of Communications has resigned (after being reassigned) in the wake of the conference call scandal. But this person, if in fact he ever existed, wasn't the worst offender on the call. That was Buffy Wicks, who works for Valerie Jarrett in the White House. Wicks was the one who gave her squishily grandiose idea of "change" and "service" an ideological cast by urging arts types to "connect" with "labor unions, progressive groups." Bet she stays. ...  3:49 P.M.

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