NYT editorial: Medicare Back on the Hustings

Leading Republicans — after proposing to gut Medicare — are still trying to pose as the program’s saviors. How cynical can they get?

At the recent Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire, Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota warned that health care reform will take $500 billion out of Medicare and harm “senior citizens who have the most to lose.” She failed to mention that the budget resolution approved by House Republicans, with her vote, would retain virtually all of the same cuts in payments to health care providers and to oversubsidized private Medicare Advantage plans.

While they don’t say it a lot, even the Republicans recognize that the cuts are necessary to bring Medicare spending under control.

At the debate, Rick Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania, raised the old — and discredited — bugaboo that the Democratic reforms would lead to “rationing of care from the top down.” His target was a new advisory board that is designed to insulate spending decisions from the lobbying that distorts Congressional decisions.

(More here.)