Joe Klein Quotes
If every American automatically has health coverage, the age at which Medicare kicks in becomes a less fraught issue. We could gradually raise the age of Medicare eligibility a bit, according to income, and save money.
Klein, Joe. "The Medicare Mirage." Time, Time Inc., 2011.
That particular Libertarian platform called for the abolition / repeal of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Post Office, Federal election Commission and campaign finance laws. Extreme radical ideas such as this are not typical of Libertarian Party positions before or afterwards. The quotation illustrates that there are people in America who would end public education if they could. The quotation also illustrates how a small cadre of people can capture control of a political party and create a platform that is their own personal views which may be different from most of the party members or the historical position that the party has taken. In 1980 the Libertarian Party Vice Presidential Candidate was David Koch, one half of the billionaire conservative Koch brothers. Their money financed the Libertarian Party in that year and David Koch’s views then prevailed in the party platform. Historically, the Koch brothers moved from a minor third party to the Republican party at the beginning of the 21st century when their money was able to help drive the party very far to the right from the traditions of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.
An argument was given that if poor people would get government subsidized health insurance, the health insurance rules would place limits on what payments could be made for the different kinds of medical services. That in turn would limit the amounts that medical specialists could charge for their expensive procedures which in turn would lower their income and salaries.
Joe Klein is an American political commentator and author. He is best known for his work as a columnist for Time magazine and his novel Primary Colors, an anonymously written roman à clef portraying Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign. Klein is currently a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is a former Guggenheim Fellow. In April 2006 he published Politics Lost, a book on what he calls the "pollster–consultant industrial complex." He has also written articles and book reviews for The New Republic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Life, and Rolling Stone.
