Andrew C. McCarthy writing at National Review magazine online.


The best thing it says is its title:: “End Medicare”.


The next best thing is the last 24 of its 2300 words:


“Preserving a scam in the vain hope of making it less offensive may be well-meaning, but it’s not right, and it’s not courageous.”


In between, He points out that Paul Ryan, for all his good intentions, voted “for the prescription-drug entitlement, TARP, Keynesian “stimulus” spending, and the auto-company bailout.”


He describes medicare as being based on “the plinth of the entitlement edifice — the 'second Bill of Rights' — that began construction in the New Deal, under the direction of designers who knew full well that it was financially unsustainable[!]”


I had to look that up: plinth: the lowest member of a base.


McCarthy continuing: “Sadly, this is the standard Beltway conservative position, too... The government plays an important oversight role in Ryan’s Medicare-reform plan ... rest assured that we would never suggest scrapping Medicare, or that the government doesn’t have a ... role to play in the market for medical services — a role we somehow managed to do without for the first century and a half of the nation’s existence.”


These are just the first five items that impressed me about this piece. If I continued here, I would get at least 20 more.



http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/268818/end-medicare-andrew-c-mccarthy



Arn Nelson in Chicago