From The Houston Chronicle, 3/26/05:
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/3103111
When a rare realistic view interrupts Bush's tea party
By CRAGG HINES
When President Bush tours the nation for happy-talk sales pitches on
his plan to semiprivatize Social Security, the audience is carefully
controlled.
It's sort of like the old joke about getting a job in Chicago city
government.
The boss, wanting to know whose patronage you're on, asks who sent
you.
You say no one sent you.
The boss says that if no one sent you, what are you doing there.
For Bush shows, unless a local party poobah sent you, what are you
doing there?
You're not going to have the required ticket, and you're not going to
get in.
With a ticket, Osama conceivably could get a seat.
The procedure is designed to keep a lid on off-message lip, although
it's not been totally successful, so negative has been the reception,
even from some Republicans, to Bush's proposal.
Among the questions that the enforcer-style regimentation of the
presidential events is meant to stifle is a very basic point:
Why the singular emphasis on revising Social Security when the
companion program Medicare is in worse shape?
The reality of this question and the administration's avoidance of it
made the annual report of the Social Security and Medicare trustees
more telling than usual.
The two public trustees (one Republican and one Democrat, both
appointed in 2000 by President Clinton) refused to toe the line laid
down by the White House for the four ex officio representatives of the
administration.
Here's the bottom line, to which even the Bush trustees subscribed in
last week's report:
Unamended, the Social Security trust fund would be exhausted by 2041
(one year sooner than predicted in the 2004 report);
but the Medicare trust fund would go belly up more than two decades
earlier, in 2020 (one year later than predicted last year).
No matter.
The Bush Four (Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, Labor Secretary Elaine
L. Chao, Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt and
Social Security Commissioner Jo Anne B. Barnhart) predictably wrung
their hands most earnestly over Social Security, the issue that the
administration has consistently put at the top of the president's
second-term domestic agenda.
But economists Thomas R. Saving of Texas A&M University and John L.
Palmer of Syracuse took a different tack in a final, separate
commentary after five years as trustees.
"Medicare's financial outlook has deteriorated dramatically over the
past five years and is now much worse than Social Security," wrote
Saving (who also strongly supports semiprivatizing Social Security
accounts) and Palmer.
A major reason: rapidly escalating health-care costs, which are
expected to grow at a much faster rate than those of Social Security.
(A summary of the trustees' report and the separate "message" from
Saving and Palmer is available at
www.socialsecurity.gov/OACT/TRUSM/trsummary.html.
The White House contends that the Medicare changes enacted in 2003 put
the program on firm footing.
That's largely hooey, even though the price tag on the legislation,
including its prescription drug benefit, was a staggering $400
billion.
You'll recall the true merit of the proposal was revealed when House
Republican leaders had to browbeat their usually compliant sheep
throughout a three-hour, pre-dawn roll call vote that eventually
yielded a five-vote margin of approval.
You can understand why, therefore, there's no legislative enthusiasm
among Republicans for bucking the White House demand to take up Social
Security first.
There's another reason.
Almost everyone agrees that Medicare is a more complex problem than
even the harrowing Social Security dilemma.
Earlier this year, Rep. Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands, one of three
Texans on the House Ways and Means Committee, spelled out in an
interview with the Chronicle's Bennett Roth the tangled nature of
overhauling the nation's biggest health care program:
"A good Medicare solution is more difficult than the war on terrorism,
education, Social Security and homeland security combined."
Brady's view hasn't changed, he said last week:
"We could do it now, but I don't think we could do it right."
In his usual thoughtful way, Brady is looking for answers to a number
of Medicare issues, including technology applications to lower costs,
performance-based payments for doctors, electronic medical records
integration and the well-advertised question of waste with providers
and equipment.
A&M's Saving doesn't object to taking up Social Security first but
believes it is time to at least "begin a discussion" about health care
in general and Medicare in particular.
He makes a very interesting point:
"Somehow we have to make customers care what it costs," otherwise it's
impossible to police.
I take Brady's and Saving's points but don't see the administration
working on the solutions.
It's too busy screening the guest lists for the president's dog and
pony shows.
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Moral: If you somehow manage get into Georgie's dog and pony show,
don't ask any searching questions. They'll throw you out on your *****.
Harry
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