Cardin is kind of right about the Senate Republicans, though. They should not be sticking up for Medicare. They should be supporting cuts in Medicare and proposing even more. They are playing politics on this specific aspect of the bill. They decided to try and garner opposition to it by opposing cuts in a program that is too expensive and needs cut. They chose politics over principle here, which doesn’t give me much hope that the same GOP that screwed things up in DC over the course of the last decade has learned much.

Cardin was wrong in so many other ways, though. There is no indication that people having more insurance will mean less usage of the emergency room. Massachusetts proves that. He’s also wrong that the cost of premiums will go down. They will, in fact, increase dramatically. The only way people can plausibly claim that the cost will go down is by counting federal subsidies against the cost. But that is cost-shifting, not a reduction in cost. He’s also wrong that the states will not have to pay any of the cost of the newly-expanded Medicaid program.

This bill does nothing to bring the cost-curve down and it dramatically expands federal spending. Unfortunately, it seems quite likely it will be enacted.