RSS Feed MenuJohn McCain joked last week that by opposing the Senate Democratic healthcare bill, he now finds himself “in complete agreement with Dr. Howard Dean… Dr. Dean, I am with you!”
Dr. Dean let him down. In the end, the Democratic Left rallied to the deal brokered by Senate Majority leader Harry Reid.
There’s a lesson here: Looking to the Democratic Left to break with the Democratic leadership will only disappoint.
Dean and the Democratic Left criticized Reid’s package because, in their judgment, it moves too slowly and too incrementally toward a “single-payer” healthcare system. They dissented over the pace of change, and so could be mollified and persuaded. Conservatives dissented over the destination — and so could not be.
Dean made his goals clear yesterday on NBC News’ Meet the Press.
Here’s the major problem, David: We have committed in this last week of unseemly scrambling for votes — we have committed to go down a path in this country where private insurance will be the way that we achieve universal healthcare [emphasis added]. That means we’re going to have a 30-year battle with the insurance industry every time when we try to control costs and try to get them to do things.
It is not a coincidence, David Gregory, that insurance company stocks, health insurance company stocks, hit a 52-[week] high on Friday. So they must know something that the rest of us don’t… This elimination of the public option is the real sticking point… [emphasis added].
Dean wants the profit motive banished from healthcare. Yet, without the profit motive and financial rewards for research, education, and sound patient care, the miracles of modern medicine will stagnate and all of us will suffer.
But give Dean credit. He at least is honest about his goals and intentions, which are government controlled and government rationed healthcare. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said about most liberals and leftists, in Congress and elsewhere, who have deceptively employed market-oriented language to push through statist legislation.
Certainly, Obama himself has become expert at employing conservative rhetoric in pursuit of far left public-policy objectives. “It now appears,” he said Saturday, “that the American people will have the vote they deserve on genuine reform that offers security to those who have health insurance, and affordable options for those who do not.”
In fact, as the Heritage Foundation rightly notes, the Senate Democratic healthcare bill promises health insurance insecurity to more than 10 million Americans who will lose their health insurance coverage as new regulations and mandates make such coverage unaffordable for many employers.
Health insurance options, likewise, will be reduced and constrained as power and control are concentrated in Washington. “In effect,” reports Heritage, “the Senate bill would produce the greatest concentration of political and economic power over one major sector of the U.S. economy in the nation’s history.”
Dean and the Democratic Left object because, in their judgment, Obamacare doesn’t concentrate power in Washington quickly and forcefully enough. After all, the Senate Democratic healthcare bill still allows for — horror of horrors — private-sector health insurance companies!
But make no mistake. The Reid deal will pave the way for what Dean and the hard Left honestly and forthrightly say that they want: a “single-payer” healthcare system in which private-sector insurers no longer exist and the government monopolizes the healthcare marketplace.
For a glimpse of things to come, consider what’s now transpiring with the student loan business. Rep. George Miller and other Democratic “progressives” are working to consolidate student lending under government control. In the words of Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the “reformed” government monopoly will be more cost-effective and efficient because it will “simply stop using banks as the middle man for student loans.”
It’s actually not that simple, and it’s not reform: it’s a monopoly.
Conservatives simply cannot allow this to happen. If there is one thing that we conservatives agree upon it is this: a belief in free enterprise and in the efficacy of markets.
balconesfault // Dec 22, 2009 at 2:57 am
Dean wants the profit motive banished from healthcare. Yet, without the profit motive and financial rewards for research, education, and sound patient care, the miracles of modern medicine will stagnate and all of us will suffer.
No – Dean wants the profit motive banished from insurance. Considering that insurance is simply an actuarial exercise, there really isn’t a lot of room for innovation, and what we have is an industry that skims 20% off the top of our healthcare spending while forcing hospitals and doctors offices to commit a significant portion of their staff to dealing with insurance filings if they expect to get paid.
Insurance corporations are basically, the house.
sinz54 // Dec 22, 2009 at 10:09 am
balconesfault: No – Dean wants the profit motive banished from insurance. Considering that insurance is simply an actuarial exercise, there really isn’t a lot of room for innovation
Strawman.
The Left isn’t just interested in doing away with for-profit insurance.
Mr. Guardiano’s concern, and mine, is that a single-payer system (or a public option as the first step) that reduced reimbursements to hospitals would also reduce the profits earned by vendors of drugs and medical devices that those hospitals pay for. And small biotech companies, in particular, won’t innovate without the promise of big profits.
Right now, some of those new products are keeping kidney patients like me alive: Drugs that fight anemia without the need for monthly blood transfusions which used to be standard therapy; portable dialysis devices that enable us to dialyze at home at our convenience; etc. These products are VERY expensive, because they’re new and state-of-the-art. But I prefer them to dying of kidney failure or being treated as an invalid with periodic stays in hospitals.
The Left seems to feel that the developers of these medical innovations aren’t entitled to make a profit on their work–because they’re constantly looking for ways to reduce reimbursement rates all across the board, not just to insurance companies.
Buried in the health care bill now making its way through Congress is a cut in reimbursement rates to dialysis centers, for example. Cut the reimbursement rates and they’ll have to lay off staff, resulting in worse care. As it is, morale is suffering. I should go. I go to one of those.
mlindroo // Dec 22, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Guardiano wrote:
> For a glimpse of things to come, consider what’s now transpiring with the student loan business.
> Rep. George Miller and other Democratic “progressives” are working to consolidate student
> lending under government control. In the words of Education Secretary Arne Duncan,
> the “reformed” government monopoly will be more cost-effective and efficient because it
> will “simply stop using banks as the middle man for student loans.”
Why is this such an awful thing?
Under the current system, I understand the U.S. government essentially bribes banks to lend to students while letting the banks cream huge profits off the top.
Why waste taxpayer money, if the government could accomplish exactly the same thing by lending directly to students…?
MARCU$
canadianmoderate // Dec 22, 2009 at 11:27 pm
It’s true that some Dems are ultimately after single payer, and will keep pushing that agenda as long as someone will listen to them. But I have one correction to make about the article. Even in single payer systems like Canada’s there is supplemental health insurance sold. In Canada, it’s abut a $10 billion market per year. Most of our supplemental health insurance comes from…wait for it…Bluecross, Aetna and Cigna. Canadian companies mostly broker American plans to us through employers (they also sell it to us for travel/work in the U.S.).
Since we have a population of 30 million, and you have a population of 300 million, the supplemental health insurance market would be at least 10x the $10 billion it is here, or $100 billion. But it would probably be a much bigger market, because Americans are used to a certain standard of health care that would probably change if it became a single payer system. My point is that health insurance wouldn’t simply disappear.
What would disappear would be the tens of thousands of administrative jobs in the health insurance industry that would become immediately redundant under a single payer system. I haven’t heard a single Democrat that also wants a single payer system address this issue — thousands of jobs would be lost in the health insurance industry, as insurance companies would have to switch their business models to become supplemental providers and they wouldn’t need as many people to answer phones, and do other clerical tasks.
sinz54 // Dec 23, 2009 at 9:22 am
canadianmoderate: I haven’t heard a single Democrat that also wants a single payer system address this issue — thousands of jobs would be lost in the health insurance industry,
Liberals are always seeking to cut the defense budget. They never care about all the engineers, technicians, clerks, and secretaries who get laid off when military projects are canceled either.
(Fullerton CA, for example, was practically a company town–Hughes Aircraft was the biggest employer by far. When the Cold War ended, Hughes Aircraft disappeared–and Fullerton fell on very hard times.)
canadianmoderate // Dec 23, 2009 at 12:34 pm
I was hoping that that’s why more moderate Dems weren’t going ahead with anything as extreme as single payer. I’m pretty sure Obama doesn’t want to be associated with job loss right now.
Joe In NH // Dec 23, 2009 at 10:29 pm
The Blue Dogs and GOP should have accepted a public option with the opt out option. It that was put through likely that would have been the end of legislation on health for a while. You are now getting a law dealing with pre-existing conditions and other coverage issues which are all issues that could not be dealt with through the budget process, ie, through reconciliation in the Senate. Lowering the age for medicare or just letting everyone sign up for medicare can be accomplished through reconciliation. Look at all Bush pushed through by calling it a budget matter. At the very least we will see a temporary lowering of medicare age limits until the new health plan starts in 2013 or 2014. The Dems need to have something producing results before 2010 and 2012.