Obama's Medicare Cuts

Byron York in the Examiner today digs deeper into a point made yesterday by FF's Gusher: President Obama's healthcare scheme rests heavily upon Medicare cuts. For conservatives battered by years of Democratic Medi-scare campaigns, it's tempting to repay the Democrats with a taste of their own medicine.

Byron York in the Examiner today digs deeper into a point made yesterday by FF's Gusher: President Obama's healthcare scheme rests heavily upon Medicare cuts. For conservatives battered by years of Democratic Medi-scare campaigns, it's tempting to repay the Democrats with a taste of their own medicine. York:

"It's not going to be painless," says Sen. Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma Republican who is also a family-practice physician. "You can't say there's not going to be an impact from taking a half-trillion dollars out of Medicare in the next ten years, when large numbers of doctors won't take new Medicare patients and we're going to have the retirement of the baby boomers."

America's seniors seem already to have intuited Tom Coburn's warnings. For all the angry talk of socialism, what seems to irk many older voters is that the Obama plan implies less socialism for them. The question for conservatives: If President Obama is willing to volunteer to put his hand into this beehive... why not let him? Don't we also want a less expensive Medicare program? Indeed, without Medicare savings, the national tax burden must inevitably rise by at least four or five points of GDP as the baby boomers retire. History is full of ironies, and it may be that the success of the Medicare portion of Obama's health plan is the essential precondition for the next Republican tax cut.