Consensus Gone Wrong

The Left and Right Agree on Medicare—And It’s Not a Good Thing

Official Washington is now in the grip of an unprecedented bipartisan consensus. For all their other differences, leaders of both parties agree that Medicare, the nation’s primary means of providing health insurance for the elderly, is unsustainable and must be cut.

“With an aging population and rising healthcare costs, we are spending too fast to sustain the program,” the President told a joint session of Congress in September. He already has set in motion or proposed cuts to reimbursement rates for doctors and hospitals that are so steep that future seniors …