Oh, yay. Here comes the "let's all be reasonable" analysis of Sens. Lieberman's and Coburn's plan to make seniors pay a lot more for Medicare over at TIME's Swampland blog.
Sen. Joe Lieberman has found an ally for the middle-of-the-road Medicare reform proposal he laid out a few weeks ago. On Tuesday, the independent Senator from Connecticut and conservative Republican Tom Coburn unveiled a tweaked version of Lieberman’s plan. They hope to build a coalition of support for the proposal, which they say could save $600 billion over the next ten years. The plan won’t save Medicare for all future generations, but it's full of reasonable ideas that could gain bipartisan support—if politics don’t stand in the way.
Reasonable unless you care about preserving affordable care for seniors and not forcing them to delay treatment until they can qualify for the program. Reasonable if you're a beltway pundit, but not so much if you're going to be needing affordable medical care in your 60s. And reasonable if you're a Republican demanding the deficit gods be appeased on the backs of the middle-class.
Which is why plenty of mainstream (not flaming liberal) Dems "immediately recoiled" at the idea. What's a "reasonable" idea for deficit cutting? Real shared sacrifice, making the rich pay some damn taxes again..