Bill Clinton to Dems: nothing to see here, move along.

Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan is not Bill Clinton’s fault
By Ezra Klein

Of late, Paul Ryan has adopted the curious tactic of blaming his Medicare plan on Bill Clinton. Back in April, he said a version of his plan was “endorsed by everyone from President Clinton’s 1999 Medicare commission, chaired by Democrat John Breaux, to Bob Dole and Tom Daschle in 2009.” This week, he said his plan is “in keeping with the Bill Clinton bipartisan commission.” It’s a good argument. The only problem? It’s not true.

And it’s not true on a couple of different levels. First, as FactCheck.org says, “any attempt to cast the 1999 report as bipartisan or suggest it was Clinton’s commission is misleading.” The commission was created in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, which was written by and passed through a Republican Congress. Clinton appointed just four of the commission’s 17 members — all of whom voted against the final plan. So it wasn’t “the Bill Clinton bipartisan commission.”

Second, the commission failed: It needed 11 votes and only got 10, eight of them from Republicans. As the New York Times reported, “The commission ended its work without endorsing any recommendations.” The Democrats by and large opposed the plan. And that includes President Clinton, who released a statement warning that the proposal “falls short” and promising to counter with a plan of his own. So to say this plan was “endorsed” by the commission is flatly wrong.

Finally, it was a very different plan. The idea of giving Medicare beneficiaries a choice of private plans in addition to traditional Medicare fee-for-service — in wonk parlance, “premium support” — does have Democratic backers. Some months ago, in fact, I interviewed Henry Aaron, a center-left health-care expert who is one of the idea’s creators. And he said the problem with Ryan’s plan is that it’s not premium support.

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