Tea Party Caucus to Propose Medicare Reform

Tomorrow those  senators who comprise the Tea Party Caucus -- Rand Paul, Mike Lee and Jim DeMint -- plus Lindsay Graham will unveil a plan to reform medicare.

Based on previous comments, I expect it to grandfather those approaching retirement age. (Forgive the verb choice; it is not a pun!) For everyone else, look for the qualification age to be pushed back to reflect longer life expectancy.  And look for means testing for those in upper income brackets. 

It's good to see that the Tea Party is still focusing on trying to reform entitlements, while everyone else seems to be in a stupor over the Republican primary.

Interesting to see Lindsay Graham in this line up. 

McConnell on Today's Votes

Even Democrats won't vote for President Obama's budget:  not one.  It failed today in the Senate 0-97.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell issued the following statement on today's Senate votes regarding four budget proposals:

The President identified the problem more than a year ago when he said that ‘almost all of the long-term deficit and debt we face relates to the costs of Medicare and Medicaid.’ But Democrats in the Senate showed today that don't even want to talk about it. They rejected every single proposal to deal with it. They've chosen to ignore this crisis just like they ignored the last crisis. They're so focused on an election that's nearly two years away that they can't see the crisis in front of us.

About That $2K Deductible

Sometimes political ads come with unintended consequences. That may be the case with Jack Conway's Medi-scare ads. Conway keeps pounding Rand Paul with ads containing sound-bites, in which Paul suggests that a $2,000 deductible for Medicare might be a good idea.

Notwithstanding Conway's attempt to scare seniors, Paul has made clear that his comments would not apply to current Medicare recipients. Rather, Paul has endeavored to start an adult conversation about how to reform entitlements going forward. Most seniors who are paying attention will grasp that distinction. So the ad will not convince seniors to vote for Conway unless they were already predisposed

Here's the unintended consequence: seniors are not the only people listening to the ad, and it is back-firing young voters.

It turns out that some -- maybe many -- young people think the $2,000 deductible is good idea. I sat with an 18-year old, first-time voter as Conway's Medi-scare ad came on for the billionth time. And the 18-year old commented that he thought a $2,000 deductible made sense.

He gets that the only way that he and his generation will ever see a penny of Medicare benefits is if the entire system is overhauled. And he looks at the hypothetical amount of $2,000 and notices that it is fraction of the $5,000 deductible his family pays for healthcare. So that $2,000 amount with which Conway tries to frighten voters, it actually sounds reasonable to many.