Ex-Bush adviser calls Medicare Part D "unwise"

From the Wall Street Journal:

R. Glenn Hubbard, former chairman of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, says the Bush-backed expansion of Medicare to include prescription drugs was "unwise."

"The Medicare expansion without substantial reform of the system was unwise fiscal policy," Mr. Hubbard, now dean of Columbia University's business school, said in an online exchange sponsored by The Wall Street Journal.

"The current Social Security and Medicare systems are on an unsustainable path," Mr. Hubbard said in the exchange with Robert Reich, a Brandeis University professor who served as secretary of labor in the Clinton administration. "In both cases, sound fiscal reform should involve slower benefit growth for high-income households. In addition, fiscal reform for Medicare must be accompanied by reform of health-care markets."

Too bad Hubbard didn't speak up when he was chairman of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisors from 2001 to 2003, during the time this policy was developed.