Election 2008 | President-Elect Obama Promises To Reform Medicare, Social Security
[Jan 16, 2009]

President-elect Barack Obama on Thursday during an interview with editors at the Washington Post promised to reform Medicare and Social Security, "saying that the nation's long-term economic recovery cannot be attained unless the government finally gets control over its most costly entitlement programs," the Post reports.

Next month, Obama said that he will convene a "fiscal responsibility summit" before he delivers his first budget proposal to Congress. According to Obama, efforts to improve and sustain the fiscal health of the U.S. will require efforts to reduce health care costs, prevent the insolvency of Medicare and stabilize Social Security. He said, "The big problem is Medicare, which is unsustainable. ... We can't solve Medicare in isolation from the broader problems of the health care system."

In addition, Obama said, "We have to signal seriousness in this by making sure some of the hard decisions are made under my watch, not someone else's." He added that efforts to reform Medicare and Social Security will require a "bargain" with U.S. residents (Shear, Washington Post, 1/16).

U.S. Adults Believe Obama Will Achieve Campaign Promises
The majority of U.S. adults believe that Obama will achieve all of his 10 major campaign promises on health care and other issues, according to a recent USA Today/Gallup Poll, USA Today reports. The poll, conducted by landline telephones and cell phones between Jan. 9 and Jan. 11, included responses from 1,031 adults and had a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points (Page/Hall, USA Today, 1/16).

According to the poll, 62% of adults believe that Obama will achieve his promise to expand health insurance to all children during his presidency, and 73% cited that goal as "very important." Fifty-six percent of adults believe that Obama will reduce health care costs for the average U.S. family by as much as $2,500 annually during his presidency, and 70% cite that goal as "very important," the poll found. Sixty-one percent of adults believe that Obama will end restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research during his presidency, and 42% cite that goal as "very important," according to the poll (USA Today graphic, 1/16).

Additional Federal Medicaid Funds for States
In a recent interview with USA Today, Obama discussed the need to provide states with additional federal Medicaid funds, among other issues. He said that the economic stimulus package under consideration in Congress would include such funds because Medicaid is "needed to deal with vulnerable populations." In addition, he said that the stimulus package, among other provisions, will include measures that seek to "help providers, hospitals, medical practices, who are accepting Medicare, they've got to get computerized so everybody's got an electronic medical record and we finally move out of a paper system, which can reduce error and reduce costs" (USA Today, 1/16).

Editorial, Opinion Piece

• Washington Post: The "fiscal responsibility summit" that Obama plans to convene next month could "be window dressing, cosmetic exercises to talk about hard choices rather than make them," but Obama "deserves the benefit of the doubt" on his promise to "get entitlement costs under control," a Post editorial states. According to the editorial, although Obama "declined to tip his hand about what sacrifices he envisioned" as part of efforts to reform entitlement programs, he "said a commission to make recommendations on entitlement spending that would then go to Congress for an up-or-down vote is 'something worth talking about'" (Washington Post, 1/16).
  
  
• Gerald Seib, Wall Street Journal: The "harder part" for Obama after he enacts an economic stimulus package is "trying to follow that up by creating what is coming to be known in Obama circles as a Grand Bargain: getting everyone to agree to clean up the nation's budget mess in a really big way, one that doesn't just fix the problems being created now, but also addresses the frightening long-term problems America was going to face anyway to pay for Social Security and Medicare in coming decades," Journal columnist Seib writes. He writes, "For this Grand Bargain to work, all sides would agree to sacrifice some part of their agenda." The "price they would agree to pay would be unhappiness -- temporary, perhaps, but real -- among their constituents and favorite special interests," but their "reward would be a cure for problems everybody knows they'd have to deal with a few years down the road," according to Seib. For example, he writes, Medicare beneficiaries will have to agree to pay higher premiums. Seib writes, "Washington may shy away" from such "big trade-offs," but the "Obama era of big problems at least creates the opening for that kind of big debate" (Seib, Wall Street Journal, 1/16).