[quote]Sloth wrote:
This thread should be used as an opportunity for Obama/Pelosi supporters to voice their regrets. We’re here to welcome you.[/quote]
Obama supporter here, not really regretful.
I’ll gladly acknowledge that the health plan is rotten. It contains hardly anything in the way of holding down costs, which means that in a few years we’ll be having the same health debate all over again. It contains the Stupak amendment – a wrenching compromise that won’t be the last wrenching compromise. And, inevitably, lots of perverse incentives.
As with cap-and-trade, I think legislation is a good idea, and then when I see what actually results from the political process it’s appalling and doesn’t solve the fundamental problems. If health care passes the Senate, Obama will pat himself on the back and call it a day, I think, and we will have done next to nothing in a very expensive way.
That said.
Government is already in the business of health care when it subsidizes employer-provided insurance. Government created the system we’re in today, where insurance is practically synonymous with health care. It shouldn’t be. Insurance is an expensive way to pay for expenses you expect (like routine checkups and exams) because you’re paying for administrative overhead as well as the cost of care. And third-party payment causes huge rises in health care costs because patients don’t have any way to know how much procedures cost (since they aren’t footing the bill). Real health care reform would attack this problem.
The Republicans aren’t doing that. Nobody is doing that.
If somebody in Congress would propose a real alternative to an insurance mandate, I’d be all for it. The ideas exist; Marty Feldstein and David Goldhill came up with similar plans. Heck, Milton Friedman had a plan in the 90’s. It would work, it would raise wages and expand access to health care, and it would be a hell of a lot cheaper than the current House plan. But the Republican party seems to be more about stubbornness than innovation these days.
And the truth is, a strong public option – one strong enough to effectively function as single-payer health care – would also keep costs down, if the state insurer had the fiscal discipline to ration coverage. (Even Friedman acknowledged this.) It would be rationed, and so it would be command-and-control, and yes a bureaucrat with an MD would decide matters of life and death. But it would cut costs, and it would expand access to medical care. If that’s more likely to succeed politically than a more market-oriented reform, then that’s what we should do. If we actually give a damn about people getting health care in this country. Which I do.
It’s odd that the two things that work are on the so-called far right and far left, but if you think through it, that’s how it is.
So no, I don’t regret the passage of the bill. It might be a foundation for something real. The status quo is intolerable.
(I’m assuming we all pretty much agree that when it’s possible to eliminate serious suffering in our own country, we should do it, through government if necessary. Americans should not go hungry and they should not die from lack of medical treatment. I know there are people out there who disagree, but that seems very strange morally.)
