Donna Martin graduates!

Just a few thoughts about health care reform before returning to celebrity scandals and gambling advice. For the record, I’m glad the bill passed. I don’t think it goes nearly far enough to reduce costs or expand coverage. The best way to achieve universal coverage would have been to go single-payer (expanding Medicare). The next best choice would have been a public option. Another tactic could have been revoking the  antitrust exemption that allows insurers to monopolize markets. Early on, however, Obama made the strategic decision that bribing accommodating the insurance/pharma industries was the best way to incrementally expand coverage. One could argue that this was the only realistic strategy, but it was hardly courageous and it nakedly contradicted Obama’s campaign promises.

Is the current HCR bill the best we could have hoped for? Perhaps Obama calculated that 100% GOP resistance combined with opposition from insurance/Pharma/The AMA would have been too much to overcome. I’ve been extremely critical of the Democrats for their approach to HCR, but let’s not pretend the GOP has acted in good faith. I know it’s uncool to wade into the GOP vs. Democrat debate, but sometimes you just have to acknowledge insanity. It was never possible to hold an honest debate because the GOP decided on Day 1 that, as Eric Cantor noted, HCR was going to be “Obama’s Waterloo”. Why? Because the alternative would have undermined the  GOP’s primary message that “government is the problem, not the solution.” People who boast “I simply want to reduce [Government] to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub”, tend to be a little partisan.

As David Frum noted, Obama’s plan closely resembles (conservative think tank) Heritage Foundation ideas and Mitt Romney’s MA plan. It builds on (Republican) Bob Dole’s counter-proposal to Bill Clinton’s 1994 health care ideas. So why did the bill get zero Republican votes?  The GOP isn’t stupid. They knew that universal coverage would send them to electoral insignificance for at least a decade. But the GOP’s base (white people above the age of 50) love Medicare (despite St. Ronnie’s protestations). This put the GOP in a bind. They had to defend Medicare while assailing “socialized medicine”. And as a result we were treated to the spectacle of unruly mobs driven by misguided anger shouting things like “keep your government hands off my Medicare”.  That’s why their strategy was clearly to obstruct and distort. I know I sound shrill, but look at the record. Boehner’s health care reform counter-proposal consisted of a list of talking points. GOP leaders spent a year warning their constituents about “death panels”. Limbaugh told his listeners that HCR constitutes “reparations”. GOP Congressmen shouted “baby killers!” during deliberations. And in his characteristically subtle delivery, Glenn Beck described HCR as approaching “national socialism” with nazi footage streaming in the background.

In summary, I don’t think HCR goes far enough to expand coverage or reduce costs. I don’t think it represents “the best we could have hoped for”. I’m glad we’re moving on, I just think we squandered an opportunity to accomplish something noteworthy. Finally, the whole spectacle has made me a little embarrassed…and afraid. [Coincidentally, this is almost exactly the same thing my dad told me when I graduated from high school].

Tags: Assholes, david frum, health care, obama, public option

This entry was posted on March 23, 2010 at 1:38 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.