With the demise of Sarah Palin’s “death panels”, the opposition refuses to let go of the euthanasia canard. This time, the line is that the proposed Medicare cuts will lead to rationed care among those who need it most, and the elderly will be left to die. As the (so-called) National Right to Life Committee put it, the cost-saving measures in the Baucus bill will “gravely endanger the lives of America’s senior citizens”. Sadly, Archbishop Burke— clearly irked that many of his fellow Vatican officials are (understandably) favorable to healthcare reform — has jumped on the bandwagon, declaring that it is “not acceptable” for any kind of healthcare reform to withdraw treatment from the elderly or those in need.
Such chutzpah. The right has being saying for years that cost control is central. By that they really mean controlling the costs that enter the federal budget, not so much the heavier costs borne by workers in terms of foregone wages. In other words, they care only about reducing this component of healthcare spending to make room for their preferred budgetary priorities – military spending and upper-income tax cuts. But they are right about one thing. Medicare costs are growing at an unsustainable rate, slower than private healthcare costs, but still unsustainable. We all know that this cannot continue. We also know, verified by the work of Atul Gawande, that a huge part of the problem is doctors and healthcare providers getting reimbursed by Medicare based on quantity of treatment, thus creating the incentive to overtreat. In places where doctors pool income, or are paid a salary, no such incentives exist – making healthcare cheaper and no less effective in caring for people.
This is the kind of argument I expect people on the right, who at least claim to be fiscally conservative, to support. And indeed, the Republicans have been trying to cut Medicare for years. Remember the mid-1990s stand-off between Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich that led to the shutdown of the federal government? Well, that was over Gingrinch’s attempts to introduce crippling cuts to Medicare, to – in his own words – let it “wither on the vine”. As in 1997, the Republicans did cut Medicare spending by two to three times as much as the current House bill proposes. And as recently as 2008, George Bush’s budget proposed $200 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid over five years.
So here is my question to those pro-lifers to seem to have belatedly discovered this issue – where were you? Were you out there condemning Republicans healthcare policies over the past decade or so, policies that entailed far larger and far blunter cuts in Medicare? Were you accusing the Republicans of supporting euthanasia? Or could it be that you are once again using a serious moral issue for cheap partisan gain?
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