Robert Samuelson has a column about controlling Medicare costs:
Almost everyone agrees that the delivery system -- the amalgam of hospitals, clinics, doctors and nurses -- should be reorganized to lower costs and eliminate unneeded care. The question is how. One group favors market-like mechanisms....The other way to control costs is regulation, as embodied in the Affordable Care Act.
My objection here is that the message voters are getting right now from Romney-Ryan isn't, "Obama and Romney-Ryan both want to reduce Medicare spending, there's just a difference of opinion about the best way to go about it." The message voters are getting is "Obama wants to take away grandma's wheelchair and we don't want to change a thing for anyone 55 or older." That message may be politically effective in states with lots of older voters, but it doesn't make it easy for Mr. Romney or Mr. Ryan, if they get into the White House, to get the federal budget back on track.
