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by NW Spotlight
Having Destroyed Successful Private Health Care Market, Obama Targets Successful Medicare Programs
“Put simply, it’s downright embarrassing to have a well-functioning part of Medicare existing alongside the hulking failure that the traditional Medicare system has become for younger workers.” – Grover Norquist, National Taxpayers Union
There is a simple and unavoidable conclusion to draw from government health care programs that rely on the free market and consumer choices: they work. Medicare Advantage – the private sector version of Medicare – has 270,000 Oregon seniors enrolled [2]. Naturally, this kind of success is going to come under attack by liberals, and Obama didn’t disappoint by raiding it to pay for Obamacare.
Earlier this year Obama came after another program that works. The Medicare prescription drug program, known as Part D, was built on the foundation of competition and consumer choice. The result is that it costs 45% less than initially projected, seniors’ premiums average only $30 a month (they were projected to be twice that), and it has a 90% satisfaction rate. But bureaucrats don’t run the system the way they’d like, which is why Obama proposed to eliminate [3] some of its free market underpinnings that hold down cost.
House Republicans weren’t having any of this. They recently scheduled a vote on H.R. 4160, the “Keep the Promise to Seniors Act” [4] sponsored by Rep. Renee Ellmers of North Carolina. Rather than suffer an embarrassing bipartisan defeat and create more bad news on health care, Obama pulled the onerous portions of the rule … for now.
Chalk one up for the House Republicans and our own Congressman Greg Walden, who was one of the leaders in the fight to check Obama on this issue. If we had more choice and competition in health care, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now.