Tens of millions of Americans lack health insurance. Extending coverage to them has been a core goal of health reform proposals since the 1960s. President Richard Nixon offered a universal health plan in his first administration, but since then Republicans have hesitated to commit the nation to so costly an undertaking. Is it time to rethink? Should Republicans accept universal coverage as a goal? We posed this question to NewMajority’s contributors.
Absolutely, the time has come for Republicans to endorse the concept of universal coverage. The current system, as President Obama is so fond of saying, is broken.
We should not claim this is because of a so-called “market failure” (it takes some serious cojones to argue that the U.S. health insurance system operates in a free market). By and large, the system has failed so many millions of Americans because of burdensome government regulations. Two egregious examples stand out: laws that prohibit Californians from buying low-cost Wyoming insurance, and the tying of health insurance to employment (a disaster in this generation of constantly shuffling careers).
Newt Gingrich once suggested that we could ultimately have a “300 million payer” system. This should be the goal of the Republican Party: everyone covered, but not through government healthcare; but through government systematically breaking down the barriers to a competitive health insurance market in the United States.
Then, and only then, should the government turn its attention to issues that could seriously raise the possibility of a “market failure”: catastrophic care and certain pre-existing conditions that could become too expensive to insure for individuals.
To read other contributions to this symposium, click here.
3 responses so far
1 sinz54 // Aug 22, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Absolutely ridiculous.
Universal coverage is FUNDAMENTALLY antithetical to the GOP’s avowed free-market philosophy. Because in a free market, any employer, any worker, any consumer, always has the right to say no–and opt out. No matter how competitive you make the health care market, any American always has the right to say “No, thanks”–and eschew all of it.
If the GOP is going to start advocating universal coverage, then it has to also admit that this goal requires government intrusion into the market place on a “universal” scale. In Massachusetts, for example, universal coverage was achieved via a government MANDATE that FORCES every resident to obtain coverage. (Subsidies and a public option are available for the truly needy who can’t afford it.) If you try to opt out, you pay a penalty.
And that’s why the GOP base hates the Massachusetts system. Because while it works through the private sector, it has a significant public component too.
Eventually the GOP must have an internal debate–long overdue–on the proper role of government in society. There are those in the GOP who quote Atlas Shrugged that all a government should do is cops, courts, and armies. I disagree. But the time to have that debate is NOT right now.
Right now, the GOP is gaining so much by the spectacle in the Democratic Party that the best thing the GOP can do is remain silent–and bide their time till 2010. Then they can unveil some ideas on health care.
2 Spartacus // Aug 23, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Sinz wrote: “Eventually the GOP must have an internal debate–long overdue–on the proper role of government in society . . . But the time to have that debate is NOT right now . . . Right now, the GOP is gaining so much by the spectacle in the Democratic Party . . . ”
So, to a guy who literally owes his very life to the good fortune of living in a state where there was massive, Democratic-led government intrusion into the healthcare marketplace, it’s better for the GOP to refrain from contributing in a positive way to healthcare reform so that it can cling to the hope of gaining political power in 2010?
How many people will suffer and even die because of a delay in achieving universal healthcare? How many families must lose their homes and file for bankruptcy because of medical bills they can’t pay? And, these irreparable costs are supposed to be worth it in exchange for the GOP gaining political power so that it could do what – take us back to the years of 2000-2006?
Sinz, you are truly pathetic.
3 FleeingHomework // Oct 8, 2009 at 11:57 am
I definitely see Sinz’s point about not everyone needing to get universal healthcare, but I came into this article expecting to completely disagree with Mr. Morgan, and was pleasantly surprised to discover I generally agree with his point of view. That being said, I think the GOP’s goal should be universal availability of healthcare, making sure that anyone who wants/needs it can get it, but not forcing the people to pay for something some do not want. The free market holds the solution, as it does nearly every time.
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