Social Security Reform is Simply a Diversion
Short piece by Robert Reich, but I'm puzzled that the administration would float this solely as a diversion when it looks almost certain to be defeated. Was this just a cover for the Medicare crisis (the real crisis), or perhaps the bloated tax-cut budget, or maybe Iraq, with it's growing number of bombings and deaths?

It seems to be a strategy of simply "running out the clock" while the real problems fester and boil, and that doesn't quite fit with this bunch of crooks. I think they might be up to something else, but I can't figure out what that is.

The president just ended a 60-day whirlwind tour to try to sell his Social Security plan. But almost everyone inside the Beltway, and a growing number outside, know it's going nowhere.

Polls show most Americans don't want to tinker with Social Security. Many Republicans, facing re-election, don't want to touch it. Why still flog it?

Because Social Security is a place holder. As long as it remains on the domestic agenda, it blocks consideration of the real domestic crisis President Bush doesn't want to touch: the health care system.

Consider the symptoms. Medicare, the government's health care program for the elderly, is heading toward bankruptcy faster than Social Security. Its future unfunded liabilities are seven times larger. Social Security is projected to be in financial trouble in four decades; Medicare, within 10 years.

Medicaid, the government's health care program for the poor, is also in trouble. Its costs are rising so fast the White House and congressional Republicans want to whack it by $10 billion over the next five years. But governors don't want Medicaid cut. States pick up half its cost. If the feds bow out, states will have to make up the difference.

Symptom No. 3 is the increasing number of Americans without health insurance. Ten years ago, when President Clinton's proposal for universal health care tanked, 38 million lacked health insurance. Now, 44 million are without it at some point during the year.

Meanwhile, Americans who get health insurance through their employer are suffering sticker shock. That's because companies are rapidly shifting the escalating costs onto their employees. They're doing it through higher co-payments and larger deductibles and premiums.

It's the perfect time to respond to America's health care crisis. With the middle class squeezed by soaring costs, big companies reeling and governors screaming, the political momentum is there.

But the Bush administration doesn't want to tackle it. Doing so would require an active role for government, and they're ideologically opposed. They know the nation can pay attention to only one big domestic crisis at a time. So they're using the fake crisis of Social Security as a diversion.

That's a shame. The real crisis of health care demands the nation's real attention.

Reich has some interesting ideas, but don't look for them to be implemented anytime soon. With the cuts to Medicaid, and I'm betting more cuts to Medicare coming, it will just be a simple fact that the poor won't get health care, period. It will be out of reach. So much for that compassion. I notice that's a word they don't use much anymore.