Sen. Tom Coburn (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

Sen. Tom Coburn (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

Sens. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Richard Burr of North Carolina say they're not out to win a political popularity contest. Instead, they want to engage fellow policymakers and the public in a "grown-up" conversation about the scope of changes needed to preserve Medicare in some form for future generations. "All of us in Congress are running around fixing everything except our biggest problem," Coburn said in an interview. "If you don't start fixing Medicare now, you can't save it."

Is it enough to turn Medicare into a privatized, voucher plan? No? What if you add on means testing? Still not enough? Then throw in raising the eligibility age, and you've got a new proposal to "save" Medicare from Sens. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Richard Burr (R-NC).The Coburn-Burr plan, like Rep. Paul Ryan's, would turn Medicare into a privatized voucher system, but instead of waiting a decade to do it, it would start the transition in 2016. Unlike the Ryan plan, it wouldn't attempt to cap the future growth of Medicare spending, relying instead on competition to hold costs down. So no cost controls and vouchers that will become inadequate even more quickly than under the Ryan plan. Yes, the Coburn-Burr plan is even worse than Ryan's. Maybe this is them falling on their swords in order to make his idea look more palatable.

The big surprise here, though, is that Joe Lieberman isn't in on this one.