Can we solve our health care problems by compromising with the root causes, or should we attempt to remove the source of the problems altogether? This, it seems to me, is a crucial issue on which Democratic candidates for President disagree.
Everyone knows that the US spends more on health care and gets less for it than any comparable industrialized society. And it’s obvious why that is: we’ve handed this critical social function to the whims of the market, which means the leisure class can manipulate it for profit. In other words, we allowed health care to become a business. Or two.
Most comparable societies have some form of government health care. We’re so far behind, we’ve reached the point where universal single-payer health care would actually be a boon to companies that do or make something in the US. Single payer would be cheaper per capita than insurance for everyone, as shown by existing federal programs, and businesses would be spared the added bookkeeping as well.
So why don’t we just go for single payer immediately? Polls show Americans prefer that plan, no matter how many times the Government is Evil boogeyman is raised. But it’s never even proposed in Congress. Have Senators and Members of Congress heard of it? Of course; if nothing else, they’ve heard it from Dennis Kucinich.
So where’s the pushback coming from? To me, it’s clear that the drug and insurance corporations are the core of the problem. Their profits and inefficiencies add significant overhead to our national health costs. Their stockholder-value orientation reduces the effectiveness of our medical folks, who are trying to provide excellent care but are often frustrated by the financial system and the limitations of choice it imposes. Ideology has hooked us on the concept of the All-Providing Market, despite the nonconcurrence of the data.
So what can we do about that? Can we form a Blue Ribbon Commission, comprising a pair of Senators, another of Members of Congress, a Special Assistant to the President and a deputy, and representatives of the drug and insurance industries, and expect to generate a solution that’s more or less acceptable to all?
Krugman doesn’t seem to think so.
…it’s actually Mr. Obama who’s being unrealistic here, believing that the insurance and drug industries — which are, in large part, the cause of our health care problems — will be willing to play a constructive role in health reform. The fact is that there’s no way to reduce the gross wastefulness of our health system without also reducing the profits of the industries that generate the waste.As a result, drug and insurance companies — backed by the conservative movement as a whole — will be implacably opposed to any significant reforms. And what would Mr. Obama do then? “I’ll get on television and say Harry and Louise are lying,” he says. I’m sure the lobbyists are terrified.
As health care goes, so goes the rest of the progressive agenda. Anyone who thinks that the next president can achieve real change without bitter confrontation is living in a fantasy world.
We need a fighter, not a compromiser. Someone like Senator Dodd, who heroically stood up for the Constitution today on the Senate floor, preventing consideration of immunity for the telecoms’ illegal spying activities until Congress reconvenes in 2008. (Have you told your Senators how you feel about that?)
In the general election, I could probably vote for Obama if I saw something of that fighter persona in him. So far that’s only a hope.
It seems to me that 2008 provides those of us on the left with our best chance in a very long time to influence elections in the United States. The war in Iraq, the price of gasoline, and the bursting of the housing bubble are enough by themselves to cause a seismic shift in political power. We’re staring at a classic instance of the Teachable Moment. People are disillusioned, they feel they’ve been lied to, and they’re looking to a credible alternative. Will the Democrats nominate More of the Same, the Kinder, Gentler Same, or Something Completely Different?
