RSS Feed MenuTens 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.
I don’t think it is politically realistic for Republicans to aim for universal coverage – even a worthy minimal goal like catastrophic insurance could not get the necessary internal support because of the cost and implied coerciveness. But what the GOP could and should do is become an explicit advocate for increasing coverage and decreasing cost through increased competition and choice. This should include support for a non-profit co-op option along the lines that Senator Grassley has proposed in the current health-care debate.
As a matter of message clarity, it would make sense for responsible Republicans to huddle with doctors and come up with a “doctor-approved healthcare reform.” This would include medical malpractice reform as a core way to reduce costs for both doctors and consumers. It would include creating the ability to purchase health insurance across state lines, giving individuals more choice. It would offer reduced rates for youth and young families, with incentives rather than mandates. And by making health insurance tax deductable and increasing the portability of health savings accounts it would offer an individually-owned rather than group or government-rooted reform.
The larger problem is that Republicans have allowed themselves to be painted as somewhere between agnostic to uncaring on the issue of healthcare reform. Democratic presidents since Truman have consistently attempted to address the issue while Republicans have been comparatively content to look like the Party of No – defenders of an increasingly indefensible status quo. When the GOP had unified control the best they could come up with was a politically conceived drug-plan that was both complex and a budget-busting waste of tax-payer dollars. Only when Dems took control of Congress and Bush was a lame duck did he propose legislation making health-insurance tax deductable. In the process, the costs of health insurance kept going up, far faster than the rate of inflation, and that impact on middle class wallets has created the broader appetite for healthcare reform.
The key question is what kind of reform will emerge – even with unified control of Congress, Democrats are realizing that the majority of the American people remain fundamentally resistant to anything that smacks of single payer or socialized medicine. The responsibility for Republicans, then, is not to simply oppose any and all plans on a partisan basis, but to engage the debate with new ideas and try to build a truly bipartisan bill that increases coverage and decreases costs.
To read other contributions to this symposium, click here.
SFTor1 // Aug 25, 2009 at 5:47 pm
I don’t think I would be so upset at being “coercively” treated for cancer or a heart attack, if the choice was not treatment at all. As no one is being asked to give up their private health care, it is hard to see where the coercion would come from.
The health care industry has had forty years to increase competition and lower cost. It has done the opposite.
Reality, what a concept.
sinz54 // Aug 25, 2009 at 8:17 pm
sftor1: “As no one is being asked to give up their private health care”
Given that you’re a strong advocate of single-payer with its rationing by goverment-enforced monopsony, you’ll understand when I choose NOT to believe you.
I’m sick and tired of the blatant hypocrisy coming from the Left, when amongst themselves they call the public option a steppingstone to single-payer while then turning around 180 degrees and “reassuring” the rest of America that it isn’t.
You advocates of single-payer have no credibility when it comes to telling the rest of us what we may or may not be giving up.
debs // Aug 25, 2009 at 9:04 pm
Yeah, ok–suppose you were right. And we eventually moved to single payer? And….what, exactly? All that means is that the government administers you health insurance. You still pick your dr. And we’d pay higher taxes, but no premiums, and either no co-pays or minimum ones. What, exactly, are you afraid of? That your health care would only be as good as the French have–what exactly is your fear?
You people say this stuff–but I’m never sure what the anxiety is. You act like people in Paris or Toronto are living some nightmarish 12th century existence, that you can’t be treated in these places for anything, that you’d likely die on the spot if America had a single payer system. In fact, unlike the Canadians, we’d let people buy supplemental insurance. And all this stuff about waiting for elective surgery-hip replacements? Kind of an odd complaint, no? Who are the people who get hip replacements in America? Old people–people on Medicare. People who are already on a single payer system–you know, the thing you’re terrified about. But, apparently, our single payer system works better than their single payer system in this one case.
But still you’re terrifed!! It’s all very odd.
NM Symposium Part 2 Universal Coverage: Right Goal, Wrong Principle? // Aug 28, 2009 at 5:17 pm
[...] Avlon, Univeral Coverage: Not Politically Realistic It isn’t politically realistic for Republicans to aim for universal coverage – even a worthy [...]