Fix Medicare.

As Congress wrestles with comprehensive health care reform, it ignores the looming crisis of unsustainable Medicare costs, Ben Sasse warned this week.

Sasse spearheaded policy and strategic planning in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as assistant secretary from 2007 to 2009.

Congress is turning a blind eye to what essentially is "a bankrupt Medicare program" that's rapidly marching toward meltdown, beginning in 2017, Sasse said during an interview in Lincoln.

"They're not dealing with the whole problem," he said. "They're ducking a core issue."

What will be required, he said, is the political will to raise the eligibility age, now fixed at 65, and cut benefits.

The only other alternative is to increase taxes, Sasse said.

Probably the only way to resolve the politically explosive Medicare issue is to turn to the model that's used to close unneeded or low-priority military installations across the country, Sasse said.

A nonpartisan, independent base closure commission submits recommendations to the president and Congress which must be approved or disapproved in whole without any changes or amendments.

"It provides political cover," Sasse said.

Sasse, who grew up in Fremont, is a public policy professor at the University of Texas and a private-sector consultant on health care strategy. But not a lobbyist.

Probably 80 percent policy analyst and consultant, he said, and 20 percent partisan. He addressed a Nebraska Republican Party fundraising reception in Lincoln on Tuesday night about health care.

What Congress is tackling now in health care reform represents 17 percent of the nation's economy, Sasse said during the interview.

A public option proposal at the center of the argument needs to be viewed as a sure step toward a single-payer government health care system, Sasse said.

Government acting as "a privileged competitor" in the insurance market is the slippery slope, he said.

And health care rationing is the natural outcome in a single-payer system, Sasse said. At some point, treatment decisions begin to be made based on calculating the cost of an additional six months of life, he said.

How will this year's health care reform debate end?

Sasse has a guess, and he calls it "skinny Baucus," a revised plan that would be engineered by Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

It's a costly package that does not include a public option, but creates "a national health exchange" with guaranteed insurance and government subsidies based on income.

It gathers 5 to 10 Republican votes in the Senate.

And it includes an implementation date of 2013 to provide plenty of time to write extensive rules and regulations and, more importantly, move it past the 2012 presidential election.

But that's just "a 51 percent guess," Sasse cautioned.

Reach Don Walton at 473-7248 or at dwalton@journalstar.com.