Imagine yourself just a few years back trying to predict the answer to four political questions:

1) A few years from now, the United States will again be engaged in an intense debate over its healthcare system. One party will be proposing substantial reductions in the growth of the federal government’s Medicare system. The other will adamantly oppose any reduction in Medicare. Which party will take which side?

2) One party will emphasize the importance of slowing the growth of overall health spending, pointing out the opportunities for greater efficiency in a system that spends 50% more than almost any other on earth to achieve approximately equal results. The other party will passionately defend the status quo. Again: which and which?

3) One party will point to the burden on small business of remorselessly rising health cost. The other party will have little to say about this issue. Which and which?

4) One party will worry that the federal government’s Medicare spends 25% of its resources on patients in their last year of life, or almost as much as the entire operating budget of the United States Air Force. That party’s leader will wonder aloud whether it is “sustainable” for the government to provide hip replacements to people in their final weeks of life. The other party will seize on this leader’s words as evidence that he is plotting “death panels” to snuff out the elderly, the disabled, and the economically unproductive.

Reader, seriously: Could you ever have guessed which would be which? And now that you know – can you believe it?