Below, Dan quotes Ezra Klein, who argues, among other things, that moderate Democrats should support the Senate health bill in part because its “Medicare Commission. . . makes entitlement reform much more possible.” The Washington Post’s endorsement of the bill also prominently features the commission, but includes a few caveats: “[T]he commission’s scope is not as broad as we would like at the outset, but it is a potentially powerful tool.” (The editorial endorsement of the bill is, in general, less full-throated than the endorsement of the paper’s news pages.)

The commission is not supposed to recommend, and thus set in motion, changes to eligibility, benefit levels, or cost sharing. In other words, what it’s going to do “at the outset” is try to hold down reimbursement rates. That’s not “reform.” That’s the same failed, indeed counterproductive, strategy that Medicare has followed for decades. The Post offers no reason for thinking that a few more years of trying it will make Congress more willing to contemplate real reform. The commission doesn’t make reform more likely; it makes it less so.