GREEDY GEEZERS? – Seniors, entitlements, and the midterms

James Surowiecki [New Yorker Magazine, November 22, 2010] leaps to the conclusion that seniors are ‘greedy’ because we want to protect Medicare. What he neglects to point out is that the defense of Medicare is a defense of the only ‘single payer’ health care program in the U.S. Seniors may be current beneficiaries, but we are certainly not alone in thinking that single-payer is the preferred way to finance health care, as opposed to the private-proifit insurance scheme that dominates the U.S.

Polls before and after Obama’s election showed substantial support across the country and across age and class lines for a ‘public option’ — often referred to as ‘Medicare for all’ — in the debates about health care. Needless to say, Obama not only failed to capitalize on this broad support, but caved to the insurance industry without a struggle. It was left to seniors, the only section of the population with actual experience of the ‘public option,’ to defend against the industry juggernaut. That Obama ignored single-payer in the face of strong public sentiment can only be chalked up as another example of his overall failure to deliver (or even forcefully advance) any ‘change we can believe in.’

The fact that the health insurance industry is properly understood as a component of the financial sector of the economy, rather than as an aspect of health care per se, means that the ‘Affordable Care Act’ (a typical legislative misnomer) is but one part of Obama’s overall deference to and bailout of the financial sector, at the expense of everything else.

I didn’t vote Republican or tea-bag, and I am dismayed by the dysfunctionality of our party system that offered only these choices. Nonetheless, if there is an argument to be made about seniors and Medicare in relation to Obamacare, let us at least give credit where credit is due, to the recipients and defenders of a single-payer health care system.