The drive to “repeal and replace” the newly enacted health care-reform law has already bumped into a bit of Beltway conventional wisdom: Entitlements are never repealed. Even if Republicans somehow summoned the political will to try, they would first need to win the presidency and a filibuster-proof majority in the U.S. Senate.

That would be a tall order, to be sure. And no one should underestimate the difficulty of reversing what Washington has wrought—in a welfare state, the ratchet effect usually works only one way. But those who say it has never been done before are forgetting about the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988.

Unlike President Obama’s recent health care handiwork, the 1988 law was a genuinely bipartisan achievement passed by lopsided margins. It was signed into law by a Republican president, Ronald Reagan. It offered all kinds of new benefits, including expanded coverage of hospital stays, at-home care, and prescription drugs (the act was in some respects of a forerunner of Medicare Part D).

The Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act was nevertheless repealed a year later. No change in partisan control of Washington was necessary—the repeal was passed by a Democratic Congress and signed into law by another Republican president, George H.W. Bush. The repeal turned out to be most popular with the elderly voters who had demanded the new benefits in the first place.

Read more by W. James Antle III at Daily Caller

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