Cradle-to-grave Medicare.

ITEM: Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), reported the North Adams (Mass.) Transcript for January 14, "sought to rally reeling Democrats Wednesday by prescribing a 'progressive vision for America'" The senator "also shed light on the upcoming congressional session.... He'll propose a decade-long expansion of Medicare, called Medicare for All. It's intended to provide healthcare for all citizens, 'from birth to the end of life,' he said."

ITEM: Kennedy's remarks, said E. J. Dionne in the Austin (Texas) American-Statesman for January 18, amounted to "a State of the Union address for liberals." The senator, commented Dionne, "suggested that Democrats could prevail not by retreating from their core principles, but by demonstrating that those principles were consistent with the values held by many Americans who call themselves conservative. Most moderates and many conservatives, for example, have nothing against the Democrats' commitment to expanding health coverage.... That's why Kenned)"s bold proposal to open Medicare to all Americans regardless of age is likely to appeal beyond liberal precincts."

CORRECTION: Even Teddy Kennedy doesn't pretend that authentic conservatives will jump on his womb-to-tomb Medicare bandwagon. Achieving "Medicare for All" won't be easy, admitted the senator (though the wire services ignored this part): "Rightwing forces will unleash false attack ads ranting against socialized medicine and government-run health care."

No doubt some will be unkind enough to mention that the unfunded present-value liability of Medicare is a whopping $62 trillion. This amount, the Wall Street Journal noted, "dwarfs even Social Security's $10 trillion." How will Kennedy's expansion be funded? Well, the solon has a pipe dream. He foresees that by "moving to electronic records for all Americans when they go to the hospital or their doctor, we can save hundreds of billions of dollars a year in administrative costs...." Only in Big Brother's utopia.

One thing is sure: demagogues will not tire of spending other folks' money and overlooking the consequences of past government failures. Medicare is now so complicated that, according to a General Accountability Office study, physicians who questioned Medicare customer service representatives (CSRs) on proper billing procedures were given the wrong answers an astounding 96 percent of the time. The CSRs are not held responsible for providing wrong information.

Washington is already neck-deep into health care. The government, notes economist Walter Williams, "directly pays for 45 percent of health-care spending. Government intervenes in the form of tax subsidies and costly regulations on private insurers. Regulations imposed on medical practitioners are oppressive. According to a study by Pricewaterhouse-Coopers, for every four hours that a physician devotes to caring for a Medicare patient, hospital administrators spend 30 minutes on Medicare paperwork. For emergency room care, it's one hour spent on paperwork per one hour spent caring for a patient."

Further aggravating the problem, additional prescription drug benefits mandated by 2003 Medicare legislation will go into effect in 2006, making health care more complicated and expensive and creating pressure for additional price controls. Teddy Kennedy will be glad to "fix" this problem too. After all, he's a "progressive."