BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
Republican Party politicians have kicked off another round of debate and sent up trial balloons on how to cut Medicare, the government health-care program for the elderly and the disabled. Almost all U.S. residents more than 65 years old are enrolled in Medicare.

Speaking on the television news program "Meet the Press" May 7, House Speaker Newt Gingrich vowed that the federal budget to be presented by the Republicans during the second week of May, would slash Medicare spending over the next seven years. Gingrich said the proposal would allow retirees to leave the Medicare system voluntarily and enroll in other health-care plans, such as private insurance programs, health maintenance organizations, and medical savings accounts.

"We are going to propose to keep the current Medicare system for anyone who wants to stay in it," said Gingrich. When pressed on whether Medicare's current premiums and benefits would remain, he responded, "I'm not willing today to say no."

On April 30, Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole drew back from the fray and suggested the creation of a bipartisan commission to offer recommendations on how to carry out the assault. The commission would be modeled after the Social Security panel created in 1983 when public outrage forced then U.S. president Ronald Reagan to retreat on major benefit cuts he proposed in 1981.

The Clinton administration, with its eyes on the 1996 presidential elections, is not eager to share the political fallout that will certainly come from identifying with the Republicans' proposals. But in 1993 Clinton created the Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform, headed by Democratic senator Bob Kerrey and Republican senator John Danforth, to come up with the same type of proposals that Republicans are now trumpeting.

Their recommendations included raising the age at which individuals become eligible for Medicare and Social Security without penalties from 65 to 70. Another idea was to cut the annual cost-of-living adjustment.

At the time, former Social Security commissioner Robert Ball said these measures would amount to a 44 percent reduction in benefits for workers who have earned average wages over the course of their lives.

Clinton shelved the commission's proposals, recognizing the potentially explosive opposition that could develop. Today, White House officials coyly criticize Dole and Gingrich for getting cold feet and looking for political cover in order to slash Medicare.

"When your party puts a detailed budget on the table, when they explain that they are not slashing Medicare to pay for it," we will talk, Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala told Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee.

No honor among thieves
The Republicans are fuming over Clinton's grandstanding, and especially his playing friend to the elderly when he addressed the White House Conference on the Aging May 3. "I believe it is wrong simply to slash Medicare and Medicaid to pay for tax cuts for people who are well off," Clinton told the audience.

"Instead of searching for solutions, the president and his staff are searching for votes," Dole and Gingrich piously declared in a joint statement. Clinton "is hoping to gain some sort of advantage with America's seniors," they complained.

Republicans in Congress are discussing plans to reduce Medicare spending by an average of $35 billion to $45 billion a year over the next seven years, slicing up to $300 billion. They also promised not to touch Social Security or lower the military budget. Some $1 trillion is allocated for the war budget from 1994-97.

At the same time that capitalist politician are targeting cuts in entitlements that affect working people most dearly, not a word is uttered about reducing interest payments to the wealthy bondholders of the national debt. The Clinton administration's budget projections for 1995 includes a pay out of $234 billion in interest payments alone to these well- to-do welfare recipients.

The Republicans' attack on Medicare centers on the scare story that the program is about to run out of money. They claim their goal is to save health care for the elderly.

Some Republicans have suggested proposals to give Medicare recipients a fixed sum for medical care - $5,000 a year has been suggested - and let them choose a program of their choice or keep the money. Such an allocation would not go far when the cost of treating even minor heart failure can cost anywhere from $6,000 to $12,000, according to a survey of 500,000 bills for acute care in Georgia hospitals from 1990 to 1992. Treatment for pneumonia averaged $11,864 at one of the state's hospitals.

With the Clinton administration keeping an arms length from forging a bipartisan policy on Medicare cuts, the Republicans are "so nervous about Medicare" that they can't even draft a resolution on paper, noted the New York Times.

Pollsters for the Republican Party found that most working people see Medicare as an entitlement fundamentally connected to Social Security. Going after Medicare "is not so politically simple" as gutting "antipoverty programs" like welfare said one Times reporter.

"They can't do everything they promised to do without taking a big whack out of Medicare," Geoffrey Garin, a Democratic Party pollster, said gleefully. "They can't live up to their promises."

But the Washington Post chided the twin parties of big business in an editorial titled, "The Medicare Buzz Saw" to "stop jabbing at one another and start talking instead about how" to execute the bipartisan assault on Medicare "as both know they eventually must."  
 
 
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