This story comes from our partner

One thing Republicans and Democrats have learned in recent years is how to use Medicare to attack the other party. Republicans say Democrats will ruin the program by letting it go bankrupt, while Democrats say the GOP wants to abolish the program altogether.

It’s hard for voters to sort out who’s telling the truth, and even harder to tell which party will have an advantage on the issue in 2012.

Next week, we’ll have the results of a political test case – a three-way congressional election in New York, where Medicare has become a central issue. The focus is on the Republican plan to replace Medicare in the future with vouchers for beneficiaries to buy private insurance.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) says that plan is a political boon to her party.

“It has served us well politically because of a race in upstate New York,” she says, “a race we should not have had any prospects in – but Medicare has changed that whole race.”

An Unexpectedly Competitive Race

New York’s 26th Congressional District is one of the 10 most heavily Republican districts in the country. But the race has become competitive since Democrats began using Medicare to hammer Republican Jane Corwin and the independent, Jack Davis, who claims to be the Tea Party candidate.

“You’ve earned it, worked your whole life for it,” says the Democratic ad supporting candidate Kathy Hochul. “Unfortunately, Jack Davis said Social Security benefits may have to be adjusted down. Worse, Jane Corwin supports a budget that essentially ends Medicare.”

Republicans are firing right back with their own ad, which, just as in 2010, accuses Democrats of cutting Medicare: “Kathy Hochul – a false campaign about Jane Corwin’s position on Medicare, when the truth is, it’s Hochul who says she would cut Medicare and Social Security.”

The prize here is the votes of those who are retired or soon to retire.

In 2010, voters older than 60 were one-third of the electorate, and Republicans won their biggest share of them since the Reagan years. That’s a big reason why Democrats lost the House. Now, Pelosi is determined to get those seniors back – and with them the House majority.

“We won the House of Representatives in 2006 because in 2005, President Bush thought it was a good idea to privatize – or partially privatize – Social Security. [That was] deadly, politically,” Pelosi says. “This is what is in our DNA as Democrats, and the same thing with Medicare. So if they want to mess with Medicare, we’re here for the fight.”

Pelosi says she and President Obama are open to making some changes to keep Medicare solvent, but are opposed to anything that would alter the basic structure of the program.

A Change In The Political Dynamics

Still, the politics of Medicare aren’t as simple as in the past, says Bob Blendon of Harvard University, who tracks public opinion on health care.

“The thing that has changed the political dynamic is that though people oppose the cuts for Medicare, they’re very anxious to see something done about the budget deficit now and the national debt,” Blendon says.

That’s why Republican Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the author of the controversial Medicare plan, says he is heartened by polls showing Republicans have an edge with voters concerned about the debt.

“My town halls were phenomenally, overwhelmingly supportive; they were 80/20 crowds,” Ryan said recently. “Clearly, an issue like this is going to be controversial, but the vast majority of crowds that members experienced were overwhelmingly positive.”

Every House Republican but four voted for Ryan’s Medicare plan. But in the Senate, Republicans have no plans to take it up. The Republican presidential hopefuls have been lukewarm, and one – former House Speaker Newt Gingrich – said on Meet the Press that he opposes the Ryan plan because it was “too big a jump.”

“I don’t think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate,” Gingrich said. “I think we need a national conversation to get to a better Medicare system with more choices for seniors.”

There’s a reason for the split among Republicans, Blendon says. “If you are running for president, I don’t think that you want to find yourself in a position that could be unpopular among people who have been voting Republican in repeated elections.”

But he says Republican House members may have a different set of political calculations.

“If I’m somebody who won a really aggressive primary in a Tea Party-type conservative fiscal point of view,” Blendon says, “I could be challenged if I don’t do something right now about this budget deficit.”

But doing something about the deficit means doing something about its biggest driver, Medicare, which is still political quicksand. That’s why it’s unlikely any big progress on the deficit will be made before the next election.

This <a target="_blank" href="/medicare/medicare-debate-edge/">article</a&gt; first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="">KFF Health News</a> and is republished here under a <a target="_blank" href=" Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src="/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2023/04/kffhealthnews-icon.png?w=150&quot; style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;">

This story comes from our partner

The White House has been trying to highlight popular parts of the health care law as they go into effect. Last week, it was $250 prescription drug rebate checks that Democrats hope will improve seniors’ opinions of the law.

Next month, there will be a new high-risk coverage pool for people who are uninsured because of pre-existing conditions.

Still, the overall plan remains unpopular, and Republicans are campaigning on a promise to repeal the law and replace it with something less costly.

But when it comes to repeal – well, Democrats think that could help them, too.

Both Sides Now

President Obama has a two-track strategy on health care – point out the appealing parts of the law and point a finger at the people he says would take them away.

“Some of the folks who were against health reform in Congress, they still think that none of this should have happened. They don’t think you should be getting these rebates – don’t think we should be closing this doughnut hole,” he told an audience last week. “In fact, you have an entire party out there that’s running on a platform of repeal.”

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is trying to get Republicans on the record about repeal. And Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the head of the Democrats’ House campaign committee, is happy to talk about his opponents’ position.

“The No. 1 priority of the Republicans going into this election is to repeal health care reform altogether and essentially hand the keys to the health care system back over to the insurance industry,” he says. “I think that this Republican strategy of ‘let’s repeal health care reform’ is a failed strategy.”

But Republicans don’t think so. And they’re not backing off.

“I think it’s very important that this bill, which is going to cut half a trillion out of Medicare and really is going to add tremendously to the federal bureaucracy and put the government in charge of your health care, needs to be repealed,” says Republican Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan.

Hundreds of other Republicans running for office this year – incumbents and challengers – have signed a pledge at repealit.org, including Carly Fiorina in California, Roy Blunt in Missouri and David Vitter in Louisiana.

Who’s Right?

So, Democrats and Republicans think repeal will work for them. But both sides can’t be right.

“As always, public opinion is complicated,” says Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who has been doing surveys on health care since 1991.

“As you look at multiple public surveys, people still say they oppose the health care bill passed by President Obama. What’s not clear is what happens next,” he says.

McInturff points out that in many conservative districts, Democrats who voted for the health care bill will have trouble this fall – and, as a metaphor for big spending and intrusive government, health care is unbeatable.

But that’s quite different from saying what comes next should be repeal.

Taking Benefits Back

Obama’s top pollster, Joel Benenson, points to something else voters say about health care.

“When you ask people looking forward, now that the bill has passed, ‘What do you want to happen?’ ” he says, “clear majorities say, ‘Give the law a chance to work – make changes if needed.’ Only about 4 in 10 say ‘repeal it.’ “

Former White House communications director Anita Dunn, who is running an independent campaign to boost the health care law, is counting on something that’s worked in the past: Once the government confers a new benefit, it is very hard to take it back.

“The Republicans put themselves into a box. Their base wants repeal, but the broader group of voters that they have to appeal to want those consumer protections,” Dunn says. “What are the Republicans going to do if they repeal this? Make senior citizens return their $250 checks?”

‘If Not This, What?’

McInturff acknowledges that the political landscape for health care has shifted. Now that the bill is the law, Republicans have to adapt.

“And so I do think for the Republicans it creates an enormous kind of obligation to say, ‘If you were going to start over, what would you do differently?'” he says. “Republicans have to put more on the table in terms of: ‘If not this, what?’ “

Republicans did try to put something on the table. Earlier this month, they unveiled their own bill to replace what they call “Obamacare.” But it got relatively little attention. Too many other things were going on.

“If there had not been this oil spill, my guess is we’d have a long-continued debate about health care – Was it good or bad?” McInturff says. “But that conversation has been kind of squooshed. And it’s a good reminder of the reasons why it’s very hard to sustain debate in this country, because we kind of move on to the next problem.”

This <a target="_blank" href="/news/npr-both-parties-try-to-score-points-off-health-care-law/">article</a&gt; first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="">KFF Health News</a> and is republished here under a <a target="_blank" href=" Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src="/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2023/04/kffhealthnews-icon.png?w=150&quot; style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;">

This story comes from our partner

One thing Republicans and Democrats have learned in recent years is how to use Medicare to attack the other party. Republicans say Democrats will ruin the program by letting it go bankrupt, while Democrats say the GOP wants to abolish the program altogether.

It’s hard for voters to sort out who’s telling the truth, and even harder to tell which party will have an advantage on the issue in 2012.

Next week, we’ll have the results of a political test case – a three-way congressional election in New York, where Medicare has become a central issue. The focus is on the Republican plan to replace Medicare in the future with vouchers for beneficiaries to buy private insurance.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) says that plan is a political boon to her party.

“It has served us well politically because of a race in upstate New York,” she says, “a race we should not have had any prospects in – but Medicare has changed that whole race.”

An Unexpectedly Competitive Race

New York’s 26th Congressional District is one of the 10 most heavily Republican districts in the country. But the race has become competitive since Democrats began using Medicare to hammer Republican Jane Corwin and the independent, Jack Davis, who claims to be the Tea Party candidate.

“You’ve earned it, worked your whole life for it,” says the Democratic ad supporting candidate Kathy Hochul. “Unfortunately, Jack Davis said Social Security benefits may have to be adjusted down. Worse, Jane Corwin supports a budget that essentially ends Medicare.”

Republicans are firing right back with their own ad, which, just as in 2010, accuses Democrats of cutting Medicare: “Kathy Hochul – a false campaign about Jane Corwin’s position on Medicare, when the truth is, it’s Hochul who says she would cut Medicare and Social Security.”

The prize here is the votes of those who are retired or soon to retire.

In 2010, voters older than 60 were one-third of the electorate, and Republicans won their biggest share of them since the Reagan years. That’s a big reason why Democrats lost the House. Now, Pelosi is determined to get those seniors back – and with them the House majority.

“We won the House of Representatives in 2006 because in 2005, President Bush thought it was a good idea to privatize – or partially privatize – Social Security. [That was] deadly, politically,” Pelosi says. “This is what is in our DNA as Democrats, and the same thing with Medicare. So if they want to mess with Medicare, we’re here for the fight.”

Pelosi says she and President Obama are open to making some changes to keep Medicare solvent, but are opposed to anything that would alter the basic structure of the program.

A Change In The Political Dynamics

Still, the politics of Medicare aren’t as simple as in the past, says Bob Blendon of Harvard University, who tracks public opinion on health care.

“The thing that has changed the political dynamic is that though people oppose the cuts for Medicare, they’re very anxious to see something done about the budget deficit now and the national debt,” Blendon says.

That’s why Republican Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the author of the controversial Medicare plan, says he is heartened by polls showing Republicans have an edge with voters concerned about the debt.

“My town halls were phenomenally, overwhelmingly supportive; they were 80/20 crowds,” Ryan said recently. “Clearly, an issue like this is going to be controversial, but the vast majority of crowds that members experienced were overwhelmingly positive.”

Every House Republican but four voted for Ryan’s Medicare plan. But in the Senate, Republicans have no plans to take it up. The Republican presidential hopefuls have been lukewarm, and one – former House Speaker Newt Gingrich – said on Meet the Press that he opposes the Ryan plan because it was “too big a jump.”

“I don’t think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate,” Gingrich said. “I think we need a national conversation to get to a better Medicare system with more choices for seniors.”

There’s a reason for the split among Republicans, Blendon says. “If you are running for president, I don’t think that you want to find yourself in a position that could be unpopular among people who have been voting Republican in repeated elections.”

But he says Republican House members may have a different set of political calculations.

“If I’m somebody who won a really aggressive primary in a Tea Party-type conservative fiscal point of view,” Blendon says, “I could be challenged if I don’t do something right now about this budget deficit.”

But doing something about the deficit means doing something about its biggest driver, Medicare, which is still political quicksand. That’s why it’s unlikely any big progress on the deficit will be made before the next election.

This <a target="_blank" href="/medicare/medicare-debate-edge/">article</a&gt; first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="">KFF Health News</a> and is republished here under a <a target="_blank" href=" Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src="/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2023/04/kffhealthnews-icon.png?w=150&quot; style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;">

This story comes from our partner

The White House has been trying to highlight popular parts of the health care law as they go into effect. Last week, it was $250 prescription drug rebate checks that Democrats hope will improve seniors’ opinions of the law.

Next month, there will be a new high-risk coverage pool for people who are uninsured because of pre-existing conditions.

Still, the overall plan remains unpopular, and Republicans are campaigning on a promise to repeal the law and replace it with something less costly.

But when it comes to repeal – well, Democrats think that could help them, too.

Both Sides Now

President Obama has a two-track strategy on health care – point out the appealing parts of the law and point a finger at the people he says would take them away.

“Some of the folks who were against health reform in Congress, they still think that none of this should have happened. They don’t think you should be getting these rebates – don’t think we should be closing this doughnut hole,” he told an audience last week. “In fact, you have an entire party out there that’s running on a platform of repeal.”

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is trying to get Republicans on the record about repeal. And Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the head of the Democrats’ House campaign committee, is happy to talk about his opponents’ position.

“The No. 1 priority of the Republicans going into this election is to repeal health care reform altogether and essentially hand the keys to the health care system back over to the insurance industry,” he says. “I think that this Republican strategy of ‘let’s repeal health care reform’ is a failed strategy.”

But Republicans don’t think so. And they’re not backing off.

“I think it’s very important that this bill, which is going to cut half a trillion out of Medicare and really is going to add tremendously to the federal bureaucracy and put the government in charge of your health care, needs to be repealed,” says Republican Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan.

Hundreds of other Republicans running for office this year – incumbents and challengers – have signed a pledge at repealit.org, including Carly Fiorina in California, Roy Blunt in Missouri and David Vitter in Louisiana.

Who’s Right?

So, Democrats and Republicans think repeal will work for them. But both sides can’t be right.

“As always, public opinion is complicated,” says Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who has been doing surveys on health care since 1991.

“As you look at multiple public surveys, people still say they oppose the health care bill passed by President Obama. What’s not clear is what happens next,” he says.

McInturff points out that in many conservative districts, Democrats who voted for the health care bill will have trouble this fall – and, as a metaphor for big spending and intrusive government, health care is unbeatable.

But that’s quite different from saying what comes next should be repeal.

Taking Benefits Back

Obama’s top pollster, Joel Benenson, points to something else voters say about health care.

“When you ask people looking forward, now that the bill has passed, ‘What do you want to happen?’ ” he says, “clear majorities say, ‘Give the law a chance to work – make changes if needed.’ Only about 4 in 10 say ‘repeal it.’ “

Former White House communications director Anita Dunn, who is running an independent campaign to boost the health care law, is counting on something that’s worked in the past: Once the government confers a new benefit, it is very hard to take it back.

“The Republicans put themselves into a box. Their base wants repeal, but the broader group of voters that they have to appeal to want those consumer protections,” Dunn says. “What are the Republicans going to do if they repeal this? Make senior citizens return their $250 checks?”

‘If Not This, What?’

McInturff acknowledges that the political landscape for health care has shifted. Now that the bill is the law, Republicans have to adapt.

“And so I do think for the Republicans it creates an enormous kind of obligation to say, ‘If you were going to start over, what would you do differently?'” he says. “Republicans have to put more on the table in terms of: ‘If not this, what?’ “

Republicans did try to put something on the table. Earlier this month, they unveiled their own bill to replace what they call “Obamacare.” But it got relatively little attention. Too many other things were going on.

“If there had not been this oil spill, my guess is we’d have a long-continued debate about health care – Was it good or bad?” McInturff says. “But that conversation has been kind of squooshed. And it’s a good reminder of the reasons why it’s very hard to sustain debate in this country, because we kind of move on to the next problem.”

This <a target="_blank" href="/news/npr-both-parties-try-to-score-points-off-health-care-law/">article</a&gt; first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="">KFF Health News</a> and is republished here under a <a target="_blank" href=" Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src="/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2023/04/kffhealthnews-icon.png?w=150&quot; style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;">