Medicare

The Gadflyer version of Political Aims doesn’t seem to have a way to link to individual posts, which is a shame. This one from Amy Sullivan on the Medicare bill is a doozy:

Let’s review. The Medicare bill only passed the House after Republican leaders:

a) broke all institutional precedent and held the vote open for a record three hours, instead of the traditional fifteen minutes;
b) used the extra time to “convince” a handful of representatives who had already voted against the bill to change their votes;
c) possibly threatened and/or bribed at least one representative;
d) broke the additional precedent of barring non-Members from the floor of the House during a vote by allowing HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson to “have a little talk with” some recalcitrant representatives; and now
e) lied about what they knew the final cost of the measure to be.

No wonder they’re spending federal tax dollars trying to convince us all that it was such a great idea. There’s absolutely no way the thing would have passed if the truth had been on the table. This isn’t a little political spat. This is pattern and practice. And it’s important. So pay attention.

P.S. Another post worth reading on the subject. The punchline is that the actuary was ordered not to present his findings on the bill for two reasons. The first, of course, was that he showed that the costs for the bill were higher than the House leadership was promising. The second is that they showed that the Republican plan “could increase premiums for those who stay in traditional programs by as much as 25 percent.”