Morning...Reading Assignment

My friend Phillip Longman has for three decades been one of America's most creative, common-sensical, and non-doctrinaire thinkers on public policy. His latest piece (in the Washington Monthly) is the best proposal I've ever seen for how to get Medicare spending under control without making seniors pay 68 percent of their medical bills out of pocket (as the Congressional Budget Office says Rep. Paul Ryan's voucher proposal would) or creating a shortage of doctors willing to treat Medicare patients (as Democratic proposals to cut reimbursement to providers might).

Longman would require that Medicare stop reimbursing fee-for-service medicine and instead provide benefits exclusively through nonprofit Health Maintenance Organizations and the Veterans Administration...