SWING AWAY:

The State of the Union (President George W. Bush, Jan. 28, 2003, Jewish World Review)

Health care reform must begin with Medicare; Medicare is the binding commitment of a caring society.

We must renew that commitment by giving seniors access to the preventive medicine and new drugs that are transforming health care in America.

Seniors happy with the current Medicare system should be able to keep their coverage just the way it is.

And just like you, the members of Congress, and your staffs and other federal employees, all seniors should have the choice of a health care plan that provides prescription drugs.

My budget will commit an additional $400 billion over the next decade to reform and strengthen Medicare. Leaders of both political parties have talked for years about strengthening Medicare. I urge the members of this new Congress to act this year.

To improve our health care system, we must address one of the prime causes of higher cost: the constant threat that physicians and hospitals will be unfairly sued.

Because of excessive litigation, everybody pays more for health care, and many parts of America are losing fine doctors. No one has ever been healed by a frivolous lawsuit; I urge the Congress to pass medical liability reform.

No matter how often the Left, far Right, and Libertarians dismiss him as a Rockefeller Republican or Clinton-lite, Mr. Bush, rather than backing doiwn from something like privatizing Social Security, pushes the envelope farther--here proposing the privatization of Medicare. EJ Dionne, on NPR, called the speech Clintonesque. If Bill Clinton had proposed vouchers and privatizing the Welfare State's middle class benefits, when he had a Congress that would have eagerly passed them, he'd be remembered for more than being a sexual predator and he'd have left the country in the best shape it had ever been in.

Instead the heavy-lifting falls to a Republican president, who will be savaged by the Democrats and their interest groups, especially the media. But if President Bush can just get the process of privatization started it will be a more important legacy than the war on terror.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 29, 2003 10:44 AM