MEDICARE: NO TIME FOR POLITICAL GAMES

Medicare is back in the news, and the latest report isn't good. The medical care program for seniors is running out of money, and everyone knows it. More than a year ago, President Clinton appointed a bipartisan commission to recommend needed reforms to return the program to solvency. Co-chaired by Sen. John Breaux, D-Louisiana, and Rep. Bill Thomas, R-California, the commission did much good work and seemed ready to recommend a move toward a system of choices similar to the health insurance program enjoyed by federal workers. Basically, the proposal offered seniors a menu of choices to choose from instead of the current one-size-fits-all straitjacket of a program. It offered the promise of a limited free-market approach to the current socialized system.

That was before President Clinton injected the crudest and most cynical kind of politics into the commission's deliberations. The president basically ordered his Democratic appointees not to vote for the bipartisan reform plan favored by chairmen Breaux and Thomas. The result is that these two leaders lack the requisite 11-vote majority to make any definitive recommendation. The commission appointed by the president to achieve bipartisan consensus on a difficult issue saw its work torpedoed by that same president, egged on by House minority leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri, all in the name of preserving the issue as a scare tactic for Democrats eager to take back the House majority next year.

After this sad and depressing turn of events, there is still cause for hope. Chairman Breaux says he will work with Democrats and Republicans of sincerity and good will to craft legislation putting into effect the plan the commission came so near to endorsing. He should press ahead with this and be joined by congressmen and senators of good will and understanding. Medicare is going bankrupt inside the next decade, and there is no time for the president's political games.