Stalking the Giant Chicken Coop

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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/08/opinion/08HERB.html?th

 

December 8, 2003OP-ED COLUMNIST Stalking the Giant Chicken CoopBy BOB HERBERT

 

On July 30, 1965, Lyndon Johnson flew to Independence, Mo., and in the presence

of a smiling Harry Truman, signed the bill that created Medicare.

 

" No longer will older Americans be denied the healing miracle of modern

medicine, " said Johnson.

 

The growls of opposition in the background were muted. Medicare was a

desperately needed program, and it grew to be a wildly popular one. But

conservatives were outraged by it. Socialized medicine, they snarled.

Un-American.

 

Truman had proposed a health care program for the elderly back in the 40's. It

went nowhere. Jack Kennedy pushed it in the early 60's. Same result. It took

Johnson's legislative genius and his enormous mandate from the 1964 presidential

election to bring the program into being. And even then it wasn't easy.

 

Johnson's biographer, Robert Dallek, recalled that Ronald Reagan " saw Medicare

as the advance wave of socialism, which would `invade every area of freedom in

this country.' "

 

" Reagan, " wrote Mr. Dallek, " predicted that Medicare would compel Americans to

spend their `sunset years telling our children and our children's children what

it was like in America when men were free.' "

 

Newt Gingrich ranted against Medicare in the 1990's, comparing its operations to

" centralized command bureaucracies " in Moscow. And George W. Bush tried to

fashion a prescription drug benefit that would require senior citizens to leave

the traditional Medicare program before they could get the benefit.

 

After nearly four decades, during which Medicare significantly improved the

health and economic conditions of the nation's elderly, this unrelenting

hostility can fairly be called an obsession.

 

Today President Bush will sign into law a prescription drug benefit under

Medicare that will introduce the first cold drafts of bitter reality to the

G.O.P.'s long dream of dismantling Medicare as we've known it.

 

Think of Medicare as a giant chicken coop. Keep in mind that the

hostile-to-Medicare Republicans control the presidency and both houses of

Congress. Now you decide who the foxes and the chickens are. (Hint: we're not

talking about spring chickens.)

 

When Lyndon Johnson and Harry Truman got together for the debut of Medicare,

they were genuinely concerned about the medical needs of the nation's elderly.

" These people, " said Truman, " are our prideful responsibility and they are

entitled, among other benefits, to the best medical protection available. "

 

The bill that President Bush will sign today is a giant windfall for the drug

companies, opening up a huge new market with virtually no effort to restrain

prices. It will give Medicare recipients a modest drug benefit, but at a

potentially dreadful cost. The bill starts the process of undermining Medicare

by turning parts of it over to insurance companies, H.M.O.'s and other private

contractors.

 

The drug benefit will be delivered almost entirely through private insurance

plans. It would have been more efficient and cheaper to deliver it the same way

other Medicare benefits are delivered. But that's not the idea. The Bush

administration has mastered the art of legalized banditry, in which tons of

government money — the people's money — are hijacked and handed over to the

special interests.

 

Drug company stock prices soared with the passage of the Medicare bill, a sign

that another government vault had been blown open and the big Medicare money was

in play. The Republicans are not subtle about these matters. The bill, for

example, specifically prohibits the government from negotiating discounts or

lower drug prices, and bars the importation of cheaper drugs from abroad.

 

And then there's the " demonstration " project, to begin in 2010, in which

Medicare will be forced in several cities to compete against private,

profit-making health plans. It will be a rigged competition in that, among other

things, the private plans will be heavily subsidized by Medicare money and will

be able to cherry-pick the healthiest patients.

 

As one Capitol Hill staffer told me last week: " This is more than the camel's

nose under the tent. This is like the head, the hump and everything else. "

 

Harry Truman would be beside himself.

 

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company |

 

 

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