Reply #69: You haven't provided any context, just another 2 sentence quote.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

And the link you provide doesn't have any context either.

However, to address the 2 sentences.
“My father was in the hospital last year and he still can't get his bills straightened out because nobody who knows anything will talk to him at Medicare. It's just a pathetic bureaucracy.”

Dean is saying his father "can't get his bills straightened out".

Well boo hoo. It doesn't seem so terrible compared to 1/3 of seniors having no access to health care at all. That's what's so good about Medicare - it provides health care to millions of seniors who wouldn't be able to afford it otherwise. Somehow I doubt Dean's father fits into that category. Are the rules sometimes Byzantine or the bureaucracy hard to deal with? Perhaps, but no system is perfect. I think Gephardt's campaign manager is exactly right to say "Medicare isn't one of the worst federal programs ever. It's one of the Democratic Party's greatest accomplishments."

Here's another quote that Gephardt references.

"Medicare is the best argument I know why the federal government should never be allowed to run a national health care system."
(Dean in Medical Economics, 2/22/93)


Of course I don't have any additional context because I don't have any copies of the 2/22/93 edition of Medical Economics laying around. But the gist seems the same. He is more concerned with the problems of Medicare than he is proud of it's successes. And it is just the kind of argument we hear from the other side of the aisle all the time. I personally think just the opposite of what Dean said. I think Medicare has been a fantastic success and it is the best argument I know of why the government SHOULD run a national health care system. Now you could wait ten years, and pull that last sentence I wrote out of this post, quote it with no context, and it will still mean the exact same thing it does here.