Medicare Maelstrom

When the 88th Congress adjourned without acting on the Administration's Medicare proposal, it also neglected to act on the projected increase in monthly benefits to the twenty million who now receive Social Security. The modest increment in benefit checks had been approved by both Houses, but it was pulled down with Medicare when Sens. Russell Long (D-La.), George Smathers (D-Fla.), and Albert Gore (D-Tenn.)--presumably under orders from the White House--refused to agree in conference committee to any bill without Medicare attached.

The strategy of the Administration and the Democratic leadership in the Senate had been to insist that the benefit increases and Medicare be considered together. Otherwise, they felt, Medicare would have little chance of passage during the session.

But it was unrealistic for the President and the leadership to suppose that a bill with even the compromise version attached might pass the House in the adjournment rush. The powerful chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Wilbur Mills (D.-Ark.), had openly declared he would use every weapon available to prevent such action. And the full House had given ample testimony to its very conservative stature this session by passing such legislation as the Tuck amendment barring the Supreme Court from any consideration of legislative reapportionment.

Congress sacrificed monthly benefit increases, a popular proposal, for the cause of Medicare, which has many opponents. The additions to benefits were needed to keep payments in line with the rising cost of living, always a problem to those with fixed incomes, Only they have been punished.

In killing the monthly increase, Congress also turned down a particularly valuable section of the bill, which would have enabled students eligible for benefits (because of a deceased parent) to continue receiving monthly checks until age 21, as long as they remain in school. Under the present system, Social Security benefits end at 18 for children, while veterans' benefits and other government welfare payments continue to 21 for those in school.

Because the Medicare issue has aroused violent passions on all sides and since there are other proposals for financing such a program outside the Social Security system, it might better be considered separately from other revisions of Social Security. Then it will be possible to extend student benefits and to pass other reforms, such as a raise in the ceiling on outside earnings for those receiving benefits from the present low $1200 figure. If the Administration persists in tying Medicare to revisions in the benefit scale--unless a substantial number of stubborn minds can be changed--there may be little hope for updating the Social Security benefits even in the first session of the 89th Congress.