Wednesday, December 23, 2009
When?
Scot asks the right question about the Senate health-care bill. Coming at it from a different angle compared to lefties, I also despise aspects of the Senate bill – especially for what’s missing in the legislation (tort reform, cross-state insurance competition, anti-trust provisions, minimalist-coverage policies for 20 somethings, etc.). But it’s the closest we’ve come to universal health-care since Ted Kennedy et gang rejected Nixon’s compromises 40 long years ago. Now we have a truly ugly distant cousin of the old Nixon-Kennedy plan that was left on the negotiating table in the ‘70s. It’s hard to embrace in its current form. But it’s time to pass something. The ‘when’ point has arrived.
Two parting post shots/observations:
1.) So much time and effort were wasted on the ‘public option.’ The left’s obsession with the means to universal health care (i.e., a government-run, single-payer system that apes Great Britain’s model) ruined the chances of compromise 40 years ago. The lefties still haven’t owned up to their culpability in denying coverage to millions of American over the past four decades. The latest all-out push for a single-payer system (in the guise of the ‘public option’) once again frightened off centrists, gummed up recent negotiations, and wasted time and political capital that could have been spent on other reform matters.
2.) Republicans could have made this bill much better if they had engaged in negotiations. The bargaining chip: Universal health-care in exchange for a lean, competitive, reformed private-insurance system. Despite what Paul Krugman says, the Frankenstein nature of the Senate bill is partly the result of too few people pulling the bill to the common-sense center.
Scot asks the right question about the Senate health-care bill. Coming at it from a different angle compared to lefties, I also despise aspects of the Senate bill – especially for what’s missing in the legislation (tort reform, cross-state insurance competition, anti-trust provisions, minimalist-coverage policies for 20 somethings, etc.). But it’s the closest we’ve come to universal health-care since Ted Kennedy et gang rejected Nixon’s compromises 40 long years ago. Now we have a truly ugly distant cousin of the old Nixon-Kennedy plan that was left on the negotiating table in the ‘70s. It’s hard to embrace in its current form. But it’s time to pass something. The ‘when’ point has arrived.
Two parting post shots/observations:
1.) So much time and effort were wasted on the ‘public option.’ The left’s obsession with the means to universal health care (i.e., a government-run, single-payer system that apes Great Britain’s model) ruined the chances of compromise 40 years ago. The lefties still haven’t owned up to their culpability in denying coverage to millions of American over the past four decades. The latest all-out push for a single-payer system (in the guise of the ‘public option’) once again frightened off centrists, gummed up recent negotiations, and wasted time and political capital that could have been spent on other reform matters.
2.) Republicans could have made this bill much better if they had engaged in negotiations. The bargaining chip: Universal health-care in exchange for a lean, competitive, reformed private-insurance system. Despite what Paul Krugman says, the Frankenstein nature of the Senate bill is partly the result of too few people pulling the bill to the common-sense center.
