A Sense of Entitlement

The recently enacted Medicare bill is being fiercely criticized from both the right and the left, but planted in this huge, and hugely expensive, legislation are seeds that can lead to transformative changes in the health sector.

Liberals are angry because the bill puts an end to their nearly 40 years of dominance over the program and injects some market competition into a system many of them still hope to use as a springboard for universal, singlepayer government health insurance. And many conservatives are angry because they believe that a Republican Congress and White House have abandoned small-government principles to create a massive new entitlement projected to cost more than $400 billion in the first ten years and burden future generations with trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities. They also feel cheated, because the plan to put Medicare on a track toward competing with private plans was reduced to six demonstration projects—starting in 2010.

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Grace-Marie Turner

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The recently enacted Medicare bill is being fiercely criticized from both the right and the left, but planted in this huge, and hugely expensive, legislation are seeds that can lead to transformative changes in the health sector.

Liberals are angry because the bill puts an end to their nearly 40 years of dominance over the program and injects some market competition into a system many of them still hope to use as a springboard for universal, singlepayer government health insurance. And many conservatives are angry because they believe that a Republican Congress and White House have abandoned small-government principles to create a massive new entitlement projected to cost more than $400 billion in the first ten years and burden future generations with trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities. They also feel cheated, because the plan to put Medicare on a track toward competing with private plans was reduced to six demonstration projects—starting in 2010.