Josh Barro, Columnist

Mitt Romney's Double Medicare Contradiction

August 17, 2012 at 4:21 PM UTC

Josh Barro is the lead writer for the Ticker, Bloomberg View's blog on economics, finance and politics. His primary areas of interest include tax and fiscal policy, state and local government, and planning and land use. Previously, Barro was a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and a commercial real estate banker at Wells Fargo. He holds a bachelor's degree in psychology from Harvard and lives in Queens, New York.

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There are two key contradictions in Mitt Romney's messaging on Medicare reform.

First, Romney says Medicare is "unsustainable" in current form. So why has he pledged to delay any Medicare reforms until 2022 and even repeal Medicare cuts contained within the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, at a cost of $716 billion over ten years? Doesn't that make Medicare even less sustainable?