Now that the Dems have double-crossed the quislings of the AMA by refusing to reform Medicare’s Soviet-style payment system, their next step will be to rewrite history to the effect that it’s all the GOP’s fault. In fact, Dem toadies in the media and blogosphere have already begun. Here’s WaPo blogger Ezra Klein:
In 1997, the Republican Congress created a payment formula meant to govern Medicare called the Sustainable Growth Rate. But the formula was wrong …
Oops. Klein left out a big part of the story. The SGR was part of the “Balanced Budget Act of 1997,� signed into law by Bill Clinton and touted ever since by progressives (including Klein) claiming that Bubba was a model of fiscal responsibility. This is what Slick Willy said when he signed it:
It is with great pleasure that I have signed into law today H.R. 2015, the ‘Balanced Budget Act of 1997.’ This Act, together with the tax cut legislation that I have also signed today, implements an historic agreement that will benefit generations of Americans.
Moreover, SGR wasn’t “created” by the GOP. It was just one of many dumb ideas recommended by nameless apparatchiks embedded deep in the HCFA (now CMS) bureaucracy. The GOP’s crime was colluding with Clinton on a cost-control charade that all economically literate observers knew would fail.
But don’t expect to read any of this in the “news” media. Now that H.R. 2015 has produced (predictable) results that conflict with the progressive party line, it has gone from being a Clinton triumph to a “Republican created” blunder. This story needs a villain, and the GOP is the designated bad guy.
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