By Dean Baker, AlterNet
Posted on March 17, 2009, Printed on March 17, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/131945/The granny basher crew constitutes one of the largest and most determined lobbies in Washington. The top priority for this lobby is to cut Social Security and Medicare.
The lobby includes the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, with an endowment of more than $1 billion from the private equity tycoon himself. It also includes The Washington Post, which liberally sprinkles assertions about the need to cut Social Security and Medicare in both its news and editorial pages. Many prominent members of Congress also belong to the club, along with much of the punditry who make their living pronouncing on public policy.
The granny bashers' theme is that Social Security and Medicare constitute an enormous generational injustice because the young, and those yet to be born, will be forced to pay for the cost of these programs for retirees and current workers. Of course, the reality is that the vast majority of the granny bashers' horror stories about generational inequity stems from the cost of sustaining a broken health care system
If the United States fixed its health care system, then the granny bashers' horror story disappears. In fact, even if we don't fix the health care system, we can make most of the horror story disappear by just allowing seniors to buy into the health care systems of countries that have more efficient systems than the United States
But the granny bashers are not interested in fixing the health care system; that would involve confronting powerful interest groups like the insurance and pharmaceutical industries and the doctors' lobby. In fact, the granny bashers are not really even particularly interested in generational equity. This is just an excuse for their real agenda: cutting Social Security and Medicare.
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