Two troubling stories hit print this week. They are troubling because they bode ill for the prospect of meaningful Medicare reform, and therefore for a budget deal.

Image taken from here
The later of the two appeared in this morning’s Washington Post. It uses poll results to show that voters in key swing states — Florida, Ohio, and Virginia — strongly oppose the premium-support Medicare model of Governor Mitt Romney and Representative Paul Ryan. At least 70 percent of seniors responded to the poll that they want to retain Medicare as a system of guaranteed benefits, rather than receiving fixed-dollar premiums to choose among alternative plans. In Florida, 65 percent of the entire population favor the current system.
On the question of whom they trust to deal with the Medicare program, respondents favored President Obama by 19 percentage points in Ohio, 15 percentage points in Florida, and 13 percentage points in Virginia. In a different poll, strikingly, respondents in these states who consider Medicare to be an important issue favor President Obama by 59 percent to 36 percent; those who do not consider Medicare to be an important issue favor Governor Romney by 54 percent to 36 percent.