For my column this week, I offer a critical take on Mitt Romney’s Medicare proposal. As I noted, a number of conservatives were more encouraged by the plan. One of them was the Galen Institute President Grace-Marie Turner, author of Why Obamacare is Wrong for America. Though Turner has been a fierce critic of Romneycare, in an interview with the Examiner, she argued that Romney’s approach to Medicare is a step in the right direction that, by preserving traditional Medicare as an option, makes it easier to sell reform.
“Medicare is a terrible program,” she said, noting that one quarter of Medicare beneficiaries have opted to enroll in Medicare Advantage. Should future seniors be given additional choices, Galen said she’s confident that they would begin to gravitate toward private plans. So there would be a gradual evolution to a new system.
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Galen acknowledged that one of the challenges would be creating a level playing field between traditional Medicare and the private plans, a concern I raised in my column. But she said that the mechanics of this could be dealt with during the legislative process.
“I am not one who thinks you get into the nitty gritty legislative details in a political statement,” she said. “What you need to do is get buy in to your vision, because you never know what Congress is going to do with the legislative details anyway.”
