Obama, One of Medicare’s Least Plausible Defenders: Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan is certainly open to attack. I oppose it. Dems might make great use of it as an issue. But President Obama is a highly imperfect Medicare defender, having agreed to take Medicare away from 65 and 66 year olds in the failed “grand bargain” talks with John Boehner. Indeed, according to the NYT, Obama thinks he didn’t get enough credit from the press for his willingness to throw Medicare under the bus. …
The news media have played a crucial role in Mr. Obama’s career, helping to make him a national star not long after he had been an anonymous state legislator. As president, however, he has come to believe the news media have had a role in frustrating his ambitions to change the terms of the country’s political discussion. He particularly believes that Democrats do not receive enough credit for their willingness to accept cuts in Medicare and Social Security, while Republicans oppose almost any tax increase to reduce the deficit. [E.A.]
P.S.: There’s also the issue of whether Obama is planning to push poor Americans who are entitled to Medicare into inferior Medicaid plans …