You know, a person could be forgiven for wondering who’s running the show—or if anyone is running the show—over at the White House.
You will recall that in 2003, the Bush administration pushed through—and we do mean “pushed”—the Medicare Modernization Act, which provided a new prescription drug benefit for every senior.
First, let it be said that the program has worked much better than some of us had predicted, thanks in no small part to the administrative efforts of then-Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mark McClellan.
But the administration met with a lot of resistance from conservatives at the time because the drug plan included everyone, regardless of income. There was some minor means-testing introduced in the bill. But for the most part it was a new entitlement for every senior.
Now, four years later, the administration is proposing expanding the means-testing element, raising fees on individuals with annual incomes over $80,000, and families with incomes over $160,000.
Had the administration included some serious means-testing in the original version of the bill, or better yet, had the administration specifically targeted low-income seniors with no drug coverage, President Bush would not have alienated so many of his conservative supporters in the first place.
So, having handed America’s seniors—all of them—a huge gift, he now proposes taking some of it away.
What the president wants to do—raising the premium for higher-income seniors—amounts to a tax increase on hundreds of thousands of seniors. Good luck with that! How many members of Congress want to go on record as supporting higher taxes on seniors? Especially since a couple of hundred congressmen have taken a pledge not to raise taxes.
The proposal amounts to making all of those pledge-takers break their promise not to raise taxes, which could lead to disastrous results. Can anyone say, “Read my lips”?
And by targeting the higher–income seniors, the Bush administration is, in essence, saying that Democratic schemes to raise taxes on the rich are appropriate. After all, the president is doing it.
Yes, you can make the case that Medicare should have been means-tested all along. But it wasn’t. By proposing to scale back benefits, or raising taxes (which takes away some of the seniors’ benefits), the president may find out that politically, it is better to give than to retrieve.