Mitt Romney tried to differentiate his health care plan from President Obama’s during tonight’s debate by noting that his plan, unlike Obama’s, didn’t cut Medicare. This was problematic on several levels.
To start with, it’s pretty disingenuous. As governor, Romney didn’t have the option of cutting Medicare, which is a federal program. He did, however, work to expand Medicaid eligibility as part of the health care law. And the cost of that expansion was shared with federal taxpayers, something that undermines his argument that his plan was a purely state solution.
On top of that, of all criticisms to make of Obamacare from a conservative perspective, the Medicare cuts argument is the weakest one. Yes, it was financially irresponsible for Obama to use the Medicare cuts to help finance a new entitlement rather than reduce the deficit. But criticizing the whole idea of cutting Medicare as something bad in and of itself just reinforces the third rail status of a program that needs to be seriously overhauled if our nation has any hopes of averting a fiscal disaster.
