The White House, the “news” media and the nutroots are all whining because the Senate has watered down Obama’s cherished “independent Medicare Commission.” The kvetching from WaPo’s Ezra Klein is typical:
The independent Medicare Commission is one of the most promising cost-control measures in the Senate bill. But … it’s been seriously weakened in recent weeks.
This is a good thing. When our liberal friends call a new health care bureaucracy “promising,” we WANT it weakened (if not killed outright). And this commission would have been particularly pernicious.
As envisioned by the White House, its cost-cutting (read: rationing) recommendations would have automatically become law unless Congress found equivalent savings elsewhere in the budget.
But Senate majority leader Harry Reid had to compromise on the commission in order to get his “reform” bill to the floor. He had to weaken its powers to get the support of conservative Democrats:
The current version would allow it to make recommendations only when Medicare spending per capita grows faster than overall health costs. That almost never occurs … it “turns off the commission” before it even begins, says a senior congressional aide.
If ever a commission needed to be “turned off,” this was it. Despite the whoppers the President and his congressional accomplices keep telling, this commission was all about rationing.
That Obama’s independent Medicare Commission has received ”end-of-life counseling” in the now-smokeless backrooms of the Senate is genuine cause for celebration, not angst.
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