Republicans Gone Amok

The Republican National Committee has proposed a healthcare bill of rights for senior citizens, which opposes cutting Medicare spending or limits on end-of-life care. While this may provide tactical benefits to the GOP in its efforts to defeat Obama's plans for greater government control of healthcare, it comes at potentially a high price down the road.

We have a profound problem with the current government healthcare plans, Medicare and Medicaid. Medicare has an unfunded liability of over $50 trillion (yes, that's trillion) - necessitating either reductions in benefits or enormous increases in taxes. As such, the Repbulican party needs to promote policies that reduce the financial time bomb of government-provided healthcare benefits.

This is of a piece with George Bush's healthcare policies, where his most notable "accomplishment" was a new, large entitlement - adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare. Bush did it thinking he could secure improve Republican's image on healthcare policies. Instead, it has added to the our financial burden and did nothing to help Republicans.

The RNC's current efforts will probably be tactically helpful to Republicans, but at the price of undercutting efforts to reform Medicare to avoid a crushing financial burden.