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The debate was lost 40 years ago.

Exactly. It is not going to go away so you get the best bill you can get to reform the program. This gives seniors a choice -- if they don't want a choice, they are free not to choose another plan. Never could figure out what seniors were so upset about having a choice since they could keep their old plan.

My Mom, who is a senior, thinks the reason seniors didn't like it is because they wanted it all for nothing.

Here's the difference between Democrats and Republicans: Democrats talk about "health care reform," but never do anything because if they actually *solved* problems, they'd lose an issue they can bring up every two years. Republicans actually make the effort to institute real reforms. They are not going to sponsor a bill to eliminate Medicare. What they have done is passed a bill which includes reforms that are conservative in principle, including cost-containment measures, encouraging greater efficiencies, including more of the private sector into providing coverage for beneficiaries, and putting the program on a path toward privatization.

To simply argue that the price of the drug benefit is too high is, frankly, a lazy argument. The entire bill should be considered, and the provisions that are conservative in principle should be supported.

I think I heard the director of the CBO say the other day, at a CATO event aired on CSPAN, that, contrary to common assumption, only 30 percent of projected increases in Medicare costs over the next x years are due to baby-boomers entering the system. 70 percent are due to projected increases in health care costs.

Cost containment in CRUCIAL. If we don't modernize the system we are screwed, and there is no way to modernize the system without co-opting the efficiencies of the private sector.