As I’ve said before, the domestic policy area where the candidates truly differ in both their positions and their actions is clearly on Medicaid. Barack Obama signed a signature law that expands Medicaid to 16 million additional beneficiaries from current law; Mitt Romney would turn Medicaid into a block grant, eliminating the ability for the [...]

Throughout the election campaign, when the two competitors talk about social insurance programs, they usually confine it to Social Security and Medicare, and really just Medicare. And it’s true that the Romney-Ryan plan for a voucher program instead of traditional Medicare would lead to higher premiums for most seniors. But the planned growth rates for [...]

Republicans may cling to this belief that they still want to muck around with Medicare, but it’s not going to happen. For one, their partners in an entire house of Congress don’t want to touch the thing. I suppose they can give means testing a shot, but privatization isn’t happening. So for any big changes [...]