It is not a fallacy. Medicare isn’t going to go away because no one will articulate why it should go away. We hear how bad big government is, how bad the spending is, how bad government-run health care is, how unsustainable entitlements are, but want to go after the largest example of the problem because so many million of Americans are too dependent on the government. I disagree with your assessment that Medicare could be reformed with a GOP Senate...we had a GOP Congress pass the largest expansion of Medicare since it began in 1965 with prescription drug coverage. The GOP failed for 8 years to reform Social Security. I see republican senators like Scott Brown and others as major obstacles to meaningful reform of entitlements. How do you reform something that by it’s very nature is fundamentally flawed and goes against everything you stand for from small government to the Constitution of the United States to socialized medicine?
Sure it is. The only way Medicare is taken down entirely, is when the system collapses. Same for SocSec.
Granted, Medicare and SocSec are unconstitutional. No argument there. However, do the American people and more importantly, do voters see it that way? Hell no!
Reagan came into office in 1981 with a plan to privatize SocSec and offer personal retirement accounts to American workers. What happened? Tip O'Neil and the Dems engaged in demagoguery and labeled Reagan's plan, DOA. That is also about the time that the phrase was coined, "third rail of (American) politics", referring to politicians having a death wish when it came to reforming or abolishing SocSec. Instead, Reagan compromised and the Greenspan Commission was formed to reform SocSec and extend the life of the retirement system.
Unless the GOP holds the House, gets the Senate --- minus rinos like Brown, Collins, Snowe, et al --- and a conservative potus, the left will continue to get their way on entitlement issues. Obama and the Dems have set things up so that any reform of Medicare or SocSec will include increases in FICA taxes. Republicans MIGHT be able to swing some honest reform measures into legislation. But I don't see Medicare being abolished any time soon.
Maybe Norman Lloyd was right. I sure hope not.