Everyone can agree that something must be done.
A good place to start would be revisiting Medicare Part D, the prescription drug benefit. As a result of this legislation, Medicare is unable to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. David Walker called it the single most fiscally irresponsible bill in the last 50 years of Congress. And Walker is not prone to hyperbole.. You can thank Billy Tauzin for that particular gift to bankrupt future generations.
Means test Social Security and Medicare - only the wealthy will pay more, cut defense 50% over the next 10 years, fix Medicare part D - the prescription drug benefit - so that we can actually negotiate prices with Big Pharma, lower the corporate tax rate to 25% and eliminate ALL loopholes, deductions and sweetheart deals, flatten the personal income tax structure and eliminate deductions and loopholes, and then if need be, we can talk about further cuts.
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Medicare for a New Century
Liberals seem delighted that Paul Ryan and the GOP have decided to charge the fixed bayonets of Medicare reform, denouncing the new House budget as a crime against seniors, humanity, and so on. Republicans are taking a huge political risk, but they are now setting the reform agenda, and their honesty may even oblige a national debate about the future of an entitlement state that can't survive in its current form.
Mr. Ryan's core insight is that Medicare needs to be modernized if it is to survive. The federal insurance program for the elderly has barely changed since 1965, several health-care revolutions and trillions of misspent tax dollars ago. The GOP plan—known as premium support—would rationalize Medicare's burden on taxpayers, while introducing market competition to control costs.
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As Democrats build their re-election bids around Mediscare demagoguery, they're pretending that the choice is between "privatization" and a free lunch. Mr. Ryan has done a service in exposing this illusion. Nothing will sooner finish off "Medicare as we know it" than to continue its present march into insolvency. His is the first credible plan endorsed by either party forpreserving the safety net.