KRUGMAN: The Medicare Muddle

[dw]

Published March 26, 2004 in The New York Times

In advance of Tuesday's reports by the Social Security and Medicare trustees, some credulous journalists wrote stories based on tips from advocates of Social Security privatization, who claimed that the report would offer a radically downgraded vision of the system's future. False alarm: projections for Social Security are about the same as last year. Projections for Medicare, however, have worsened: last year the trustees predicted that the hospital insurance trust fund would last until 2026, and now they've moved it back to 2019.

How should we react to this news?

It has become standard practice among privatizers to talk as if there is some program called Socialsecurityandmedicare. They hope to use scary numbers about future medical costs to panic us into abandoning a retirement program that's actually in pretty good shape. But the deteriorated outlook for Medicare says nothing, one way or another, about either the sustainability of Social Security (no problem) or the desirability of private retirement accounts (a lousy idea.)

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[Merlin]

1. This is a powerful, important analysis.

When Kerry gets in, he is pledged in advance to deliver affordable health care for all Americans. That means health care reform.

Krugman points out--brilliantly--that Medicare "reforms" disprove the right wing mantra that the market is always more efficient. Health care is one area where government is demonstrably more efficient in delivering high quality at modest prices.

This is going to be a very big public issue in the near future.