A Slippery Reid

At first blush, reports of Senator Reid's "compromise" with conservative "Democratic" Senators seem interesting. The big incentive being that some people — no detail yet on requirements — age 55-64 could buy Medicare coverage. To certain "liberals" (like Howard Dean) this is a step forward towards the goal of expanding Medicare to everybody. And I must admit, I like the sound of it personally, being 53 and without health insurance. But if you think about it a little bit Reid's "compromise" could just as easily take us in the opposite direction. By setting a precedent of a largish class of people paying for Medicare, conservative "Democratic" Senators could at some future point insist that everybody covered by Medicare pay something for it. Whether you like Reid's "compromise" boils down, really, to whether you trust Reid. I don't.

If I were in Congress I'd vote against whatever monstrous "compromise" this round produces and hope for real reform further down the road.