The issues are outlined clearly today by the WSJ and NYT editorials on Medicare, although in my heart I don't quite understand why the 2008 election didn't decide this. I guess in a democracy, no issue is decided until the losers believe that pursuing an issue is a waste of time.
I will give the WSJ 4 stars for laying out the crux of the issue. They said do you want a faceless bureaucracy deciding how to ration healthcare or do you want a private market solution. What they didn't say explicitly, is the latter will result in faceless private insurance companies rationing health care and pricing the products to cover the cost of keeping people out of the system and a 20% ROE. But they did identify the key difference between the political parties.
The NYT to its credit tells the Democrats that they need to educate the voters better on how they plan to control the cost of healthcare and not simply run on this year's version of "Death Panels". I cannot resist saying that what is good for the goose, is good for the gander. The Republicans who used the false Death Panel statements deserve to lose because the Ryan plan would fundamentally change Medicare. Instead of a government bureaucracy that you can with difficulty appeal to, you would have a private sector solution that would be incomprehensible and expert at making appeals difficult.
Finally, for today, the NYT states that the property tax cap should be voted down so voters can see the Legislators make the tough decisions on controlling the costs that property taxes pay for. That might work in most states but how does it work in a state where the legislators routinely fail to pass budgets, maintain ethical standards and gerrymander districts so that no incumbent can lose. Until all legislative districts are based upon logical geometric shapes (and I include Congress here) so that candidates have to work from the middle to their partisan point of view, blunt forces will sometimes be needed to control spending.
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