November 25, 2016
Suppose a candidate proposed ending the U.S. commitment to NATO. Based on this NYT article on Republican plans to privatize Medicare, the headline would probably tell readers that the candidate wanted to “change” U.S. involvement with NATO.
In fact, as readers of the article will discover, Republicans want to replace Medicare’s commitment to provide seniors with insurance that covers most of their health care costs with a “a fixed government contribution for each beneficiary.” After describing the system in this manner — virtually the textbook definition of “voucher,” the article then told readers:
“For nearly six years, Speaker Paul D. Ryan has championed the new approach, denounced by Democrats as ‘voucherizing’ Medicare.”
The use of quotation marks in this sentence is difficult to understand, since there seems little dispute that Speaker Ryan does in fact want to replace Medicare with a voucher, as this article had just explained. What is up for debate is whether it is desirable to replace Medicare with a voucher system, not whether the Republicans want to do it.
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