Republicans defending socialism

I understand (I think) most of the series of political calculations that got them there, but this is just too rich anyway. The only way the Obama/Reid/Pelosi/Baucus approach to health care doesn't bust the budget dramatically is by including some $4-5 hundred billion in cutbacks in Medicare over the next 10 years (they won't make those cuts anyway, but that's a tale for another day). So the Republicans are now defending every penny spent on Medicare as if it were sacred. Medicare is as close as anything in our current system to a pure socialist approach to medicine. So that's what Republicans defend if they think it leads to blowing up plans for the next phase ogf government takeover. I sympathiz3, and it just might work. But the irony/hypocrisy deserves a mention.

Saving money with Obamacare? I don't think so

Mark Landsbuam, Steve Greenhut and I managed to plow through the entire House Education and Labor Committee version of the health care bill, all 1018 pages of it. Our preliminary thoughts were recorded here in the Register's Sunday Commentary section. Very complex filled with mandates -- and the middle section, my assignment, was almost entirely new coverage or reduced co-payments and the like for Medicare, all of which are likely to make it cost more than it does -- even as everybody knows it will go broke before too long, and the mantra is that they can squeeze $500 billion in sav8ings out of Medicare over 10 years. The insistence by politicians of adding to government -- i.e., taxpayer -- obligations when the econoomy is in the tank, the government is beyond broke, and things are falling apart, is incredible to me. Fiddling while Washington burns?