When placed in context, it should not be surprising that this is where we are at with healthcare. Clinton's handling of Medicare provides a great example of why this should have been expected.
As Lance Selfa explains in Democrats: A Critical History, Clinton embraced "bipartisanship like Obama has when he removed billions of dollars from Medicare and Medicaid during his presidency. Through the 1997 Balanced Budget Agreement (BBA), he endorsed the congressional Republican leadership's long-term goal of gutting spending on "entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid.
"The BBA imposed draconian spending "caps on "discretionary programs from home heating assistance to legal services. These austerity measures accounted for the first-ever annual decline in Medicare spending in 1999. Between 1997 and 1998, the number of sick and elderly receiving Medicare-financed home health care services fell and astounding 45 percent, with six hundred thousand fewer people receiving care. Under the BBA, Clinton literally abandoned millions of poor, elderly and disabled Americans. "
Like Clinton, in Obama's first year, Americans have already seen Obama squeeze Medicare by offering a budget proposal that would halt higher payments that the government gives insurers who cover Medicare beneficiaries through private Medicare Advantage plans.
Obama hopes to help pay for current plans(like the plan that passed the House) by squeezing "$404 bilion out of the projected growth in Medicare and other federal programs over 10 years, including $117 billion from cuts in Medicare Advantage plans. The government pays about 14 percent more for the private plans than it would pay for the same people in traditional Medicare.
What happened with the Clinton-Gore agreement laid the groundwork for "moving Medicare from a system guaranteeing a set of minimum benefits for all to one that allowed patients who could afford it to opt out and buy their own insurance.
Under the Senate plan, states could opt out of the already weak public plan being offered as part of health reform.
Thus, America continues to offer free market solutions to address the worst aspects of a free market for-profit healthcare system and politicians have no problem with turning to Medicare as a fund for helping to subsidize the burden private insurers are placing on Americans as they refuse to give Americans the care they deserve.
The Bewildered Herd & Health Reform
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