Opinion: Thompson tiptoes toward entitlement debate
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In slow motion Wednesday, Fred Thompson bellied up to a politically perilous subject: requiring some senior citizens to pay more for Medicare. No other leading candidate in either party has raised it.
And there may be a good political reason for that. It’s explosive.
The idea dribbled out during the day, with only a few details; campaign officials said the policy was still being developed and would be debuted at some future date.
In his speech today to the Club for Growth in Washington, Thompson made only a cryptic comment: ‘Can we stick with the same premiums and deductions for higher-income recipients on Medicare?’
He called entitlement spending unsustainable, and repeated an earlier proposal that...
Social Security benefits be tied to inflation. He said that he hoped to elaborate at some future time.
Pressed afterward for clarification, Rich Galen, a campaign strategist, said Thompson was referring to the possibility of ‘raising the deductibles and lowering benefits for high-income people on Medicare.’ Galen declined to elaborate.
But then, late this afternoon, Thompson’s campaign e-mailed a statement to Top of the Ticket with further clarification:
‘Here’s a statement from Fred that may help clarify his remarks from earlier today:
‘I believe that our priority should be to guarantee health insurance coverage for all seniors, a commitment this country made more than 40 years ago. Today, however, our country faces ever-rising and unsustainable costs related to meeting this commitment. To ensure Medicare’s viability for future generations, we might expect wealthier seniors in the future to contribute more toward covering the costs of their own medical coverage.
‘The provisions of Medicare Part B that tie premiums to income provide one model that could be extended to other parts of the program. The choice and competition enacted under Medicare Part D may also serve as a model for improving the system.’
Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney (by satellite) also spoke to the club. While each mentioned the growing financial burden of entitlement programs, neither went anywhere near Thompson’s proposals on Medicare.
On Social Security, Romney suggested that indexing benefits to inflation for higher-income people would be acceptable. Giuliani said he would kick the matter to a bipartisan commission. He expressed concern that if Republicans were too open about their plans on entitlements, the party would leave itself vulnerable to a Democratic ‘sucker punch.’
In an election year? Who could imagine such a thing?
-- Joe Mathews