My latest column for the National Post asks if the GOP is losing an important opportunity to stem the growing cost of healthcare.
You know, if the Democrats want the government to take over American healthcare, they actually have a simpler option than passing legislation through Congress. They can just do nothing. The government is taking over all by itself.
In the United States, government pays the health costs of the retired (through Medicare), the poor (through Medicaid), lower-income young people (through a program called S-Chip), plus federal employees, veterans and native Americans.
On Thursday, the U.S. government’s main source of health statistics, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, released an amazing statistic: Together, federal and state health care programs now spend more on health than the private U.S. economy. In other words, the U.S. health system is now majority government funded.
Click here to read the rest.
7 responses so far
1 Mandos // Feb 6, 2010 at 2:37 pm
Well, from a political standpoint (as opposed to one of morality/policy/ideology), the GOP will want to lose this only to the extent that the Democrats can assign blame to them for unproductive obstructionism in the upcoming Novembers. I mean, there’s no doubt that they have been obstructionist with no viable alternative whatsoever (tort reform? really?)—but are the Democrats savvy enough to assign blame.
That is the point at which acquiescence is worth it for the GOP.
And this is simply another way of posing the argument in favour of ending the filibuster.
2 sinz54 // Feb 6, 2010 at 2:53 pm
Mandos:
The Dems cannot convincingly assign blame to the Repubs for obstructing a health care bill that most Americans are OPPOSED to (according to the latest polls).
Americans are not opposed to health care reform in principle. They might even like some of the features of Obama’s original vision (they elected him POTUS, after all).
But they’re opposed to the pork-laden, politically-driven mess that Congress came up with–with all its special loopholes and exemptions for Dem favored constituencies like trial lawyers and unions, and its outright bribes to states represented by Dems facing tough fights for re-election (like Nebraska and Arkansas).
You’re also incorrect that the Repubs never proposed an alternative. Even McCain proposed an alternative in his campaign against Obama: Just give everybody big tax credits that they can use to purchase their own insurance from anywhere in the nation. And let the states set up their own high-risk pools for those with pre-existing conditions.
I think that approach is flawed. But you shouldn’t dismiss it out of hand. Obama, with what he thought was a comfortable filibuster-proof majority in Congress, figured he could dismiss the GOP proposals out of hand.
Now, thanks to Scott Brown’s victory in MA, he knows better.
3 seeker656 // Feb 6, 2010 at 3:33 pm
The failure of the current health care reform effort also means that we will continue to be the only developed nation that does not accept health care as a right for its citizens. That, for me, remains the core moral reason for reforming our non-system. Although 85% apparently have reasonable access to care thousands of the remaining 45 million will continue to die each year because of inadequate access to health care. Tens of thousands will be forced into bankruptcy because of excessive health care costs. These numbers will only increase in the future if ignored.
We can do better as a nation.
4 balconesfault // Feb 6, 2010 at 3:48 pm
Sinz
What’s the “special loophole and exemption” for trial lawyers?
And if you include things like state and county and city and school district healthcare coverage for their employees, along with the federal tax revenue losses due to not taxing healthcare benefits – I’m pretty sure we’ve been majority government funded healthcare for awhile.
As for the payoffs to Louisiana and Nebraska – those aren’t there in spite of the Republicans – those provisions are in the Senate bill simply because of Republican obstructionism.
If say Senators Snowe and Collins had been willing to announce they wouldn’t filibuster the healthcare bill once it was stipped of a public option, there wouldn’t have been any preferential treatment to any flyover states.
5 Mandos // Feb 6, 2010 at 5:26 pm
It’s not that the approach is merely flawed. It’s that the approach is an EPIC FAIL. It does absolutely nothing to control costs, while costing the taxpayer enormous amounts of money, AND further excluding the lower middle class from affordable coverage. It would cost FAR more than a fully single-payer system would cost.
It is completely incompatible with any position that actually reduces costs—to the taxpayer and to the economy—and increases coverage. It’s sole purpose is to include the phrase “cutting taxes” in the mix, a purely demagogic approach.
If that is the best that the Republican party can come up with, then there is no bipartisan solution possible.
6 anniemargret // Feb 6, 2010 at 9:29 pm
seeker656: I’m with you. There is a deep moral dimension to this issue. It is not just about money . It’s easy to ignore it, when there is number crunching going on. Can you imagine if tomorrow there was a news report that said that thousands of Americans died in the war? We would be rightly horrified.
But there are thousands dying right under our noses everyday due to the very reasons you articulated. Why the silence? Because it’s basically the who-care-I-got-mine attitude . It’s not in their face . They don’t have to see it, and they can effectively ignore it.
Until it happens to someone they know, or love.
For the life of me, I can’t go there. Guess I’m just a tree-hugging, earth-loving, bleeding heart liberal . And I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else on that moral scale of helping our fellow Americans. We used to be a compassionate nation…..it’s slipping away.
7 Mandos // Feb 6, 2010 at 10:34 pm
The “I got mine” attitude is merely a social/moral symptom of imperial overreach and unfettered economic globalization. The latifundia system of Imperial Rome, based in the same mentality, severed the immediate well-being of the upper classes from the health of state and society.
The same process has been occurring in the USA for some time now.
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