Nailing their positions on Medicare

[UpInArms]

http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-saul3928677aug14,0,2785901.column?coll=ny-news-columnists

It isn't as if we didn't know four years ago what was going to happen to Medicare if George W. Bush won the presidency. I told you so.

On Oct. 21, 2000, I wrote that Bush " ... proposes subsidies for insurers who offer prescription drug coverage outside Medicare plus a drug benefit for the poor who pass a ... means test that would signal an end to the universality principle at the heart of Medicare."

I also wrote that Al Gore "proposes expanding Medicare to provide an optional prescription drug benefit, for an added premium, for all beneficiaries, no matter their income, with more generous help for the poor." At the time, more than 60 percent of voters over 65 favored the Gore position. Yet only a slim majority - 51 to 47 percent - voted for him. And Bush won by thin margins among seniors in Florida (where some Gore votes were lost or stolen) and other critical states.

Why did so many Medicare beneficiaries seem to vote against their interests? Perhaps, some seniors preferred the Bush position. But I suspect the Bush campaign rhetoric "providing more choices" blurred the differences between the candidates' positions and obscured the consequences of privatizing Medicare. And perhaps Gore wasn't effective in defining the issue.

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[Jackpine Radical]

1. If Kerry doesn't get 70% of the senior vote there's

something really wrong with the way the world works. I know a lot of older people who are really active in Dem politics--hell, our county Dem meeting last night looked like a Gray Panther cell. Anyway, we need to get out & hit retirement housing in a big way, with specialized lit on sr. issues.