Republican Flip-Flop

To the Editor:

Recently, there have been many letters on this page attacking current attempts to provide medical care to those millions of Americans who can’t afford it. It’s been called too costly and too intrusive. Well, who wouldn’t be against heath care legislation that expands the deficit, threatens Medicare, and does little to restrain health care inflation. That would be Republican Senators Charles Grassley (Iowa), Orrin Hatch (Utah), and Lamar Alexander (Tennessee), to name just a few. In fact, of the 28 current Republican senators who were in the senate back in 2003, 24 supported the Medicare prescription-drug benefit bill known as Medicare Part D. Part D has been described as the biggest expansion of the government’s role in health care since the creation of Medicaid and Medicare in 1965. By the way, Chris Dodd voted against this bill, while Joe Lieberman failed to show up.

Unlike the current Democratic bills, there was no attempt to actually pay for this legislation. The bill that George W. Bush signed was financed entirely through deficit spending. The result was a significant increase in the federal debt. In their 2009 report, the Medicaid trustees, estimated the ten-year cost of Medicare D to be as high as $1.2 trillion dollars. Former Comptroller General David M. Walker called it “probably the most fiscally irresponsible piece of legislation since the 1960s.” This deficit dwarfs the $848 billion cost of the current Senate bill, and it only covers prescription drugs. Drugs that people over 65 still have to pay a lot of money for. One of the reasons that this bill continues to increase our debt is that is explicitly bars the states, those responsible for actually running the program, from using their market power to negotiate drug prices. Unconstitutional? Perhaps.

While this legislation did nothing to rein in cost, it did include coverage for end-of-life counseling. “The covered services are: evaluating the beneficiary’s need for pain and symptom management, including the individual’s need for hospice care; counseling the beneficiary with respect to end-of-life issues and care options, and advising the beneficiary regarding advanced care planning.” Death panels? Surely not.

How do we explain this Republican flip-flop? Politically motivated pandering, disingenuous, obstructionist — yes. Serious about improving health care — no.

Michael Filler

47 Hundred Acres Road, Newtown                       December 12, 2009