May 27, 2011
It’s pretty brave of the NYT to routinely feature a columnist who is completely out of touch with reality. David Brooks has another tirade today in which he lays out his, “Medicare Survival Guide.”
Brooks is very upset that the Democrats won the special congressional election in New York by telling people that the Republicans want to end Medicare. Apparently, Mr. Brooks has not read the Medicare plan that was put forward by Representative Ryan and approved by the House with the support of all but 4 Republicans. This plan replaced the current Medicare system with a voucher, which seniors would use to buy health care insurance. That certainly sounds like ending Medicare. It would be interesting to know what Mr. Brooks would consider ending Medicare.
According to the Congressional Budget Office’s assessment of the Ryan plan, it would increase the cost of buying Medicare equivalent policies by $34 trillion (5 times the projected Social Security shortfall) over the program’s 75-year planning horizon. Adding in the $5 trillion in costs shifted from the government, the Ryan plan would increase the cost to beneficiaries of buying Medicare equivalent policies by $39 trillion.
In pushing the defense plan against Martian attacks Ryan tells the Republicans:
“They need to lay out the facts showing that Medicare is unstable and on a path to collapse, as Representative Paul Ryan is doing.”
Actually, this is not what the facts show. The projections in the Medicare Trustees report, as well as the CBO baseline budget, show that the program faces a relatively modest long-term shortfall. The amount of money needed to balance the program over its 75-year planning horizon is less than 0.3 percent of GDP, approximately one-fifth of the increase in the rate annual defense spending between 2000 and 2011.
There are important issues as to whether the assumptions underlying these projections will prove accurate, importantly limiting the increase in doctors’ compensation under Medicare. However, this is a question of whether Congress will adhere to the current law, not a need to change the law.
The Brooks piece also contains the wonderful line:
“Many Democrats don’t want to go down in history as the people who did nothing while bankruptcy loomed.”
Actually, they already will go down in history that way. Apparently no one told Brooks about the economic downturn. (He has probably been too busy preparing the defense against Martians.)
The Democrats, like their Republican counterparts, completely ignored the run-up in the housing bubble. The collapse of this bubble is likely to cost the country more than $5 trillion in lost output. It is also the reason for the large deficits that concern Brooks so much. Unless the Democrats can ensure that people like Brooks write the story, they are destined to go down in history as people who did nothing while economic disaster (I have no idea what Brooks means by “bankruptcy” and most likely he doesn’t either) loomed.
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