The Party Of Medicare -- That's the GOP, in case you hadn't noticed.

Bruce Bartlett, 08.28.09, 12:00 AM EDT

Once upon a time, the Republican Party opposed open-ended entitlement programs like Medicare as a matter of principle, often paying a heavy political price for doing so. But those days are gone. Today, the GOP not only doesn't oppose entitlements, it has become their defender. This is perhaps the biggest reversal in American politics since the Democrats went from being the party of Southern racists for 150 years to being the party of civil rights in the 1960s.

John F. Kennedy made the establishment of Medicare a major focus of the 1960 presidential campaign, and his election led to renewed efforts to enact a health program for the elderly, an idea that had been kicking around Congress for decades. It also led the American Medical Association (AMA) to ratchet up opposition efforts. <snip>

The "slippery slope" argument has been a staple of conservatives' thinking for decades--they claim that every government program is the first step on the road to socialism. And, as economist F.A. Hayek argued in his 1944 book, TheRoad to Serfdom, that inevitably leads to totalitarianism.

This argument continues to be made today in the health care debate, even though it is transparently false. The nations of Europe have governments much larger than ours and long had national health insurance without suffering the sort of tyranny that was certain to have come about by now if Hayek was even remotely correct. <snip>

more (interesting article!) at.... http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/27/medicare-republicans-george-w-bush-opinions-columnists-bruce-bartlett.html?partner=daily_newsletter

:hi: