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8/18/2009
Burri: Our biggest problem - creeping incrementalism
So the public option is dead. Must be true: I read it on the internet.
The so-called "public option" – the centerpiece of President Obama’s health care “reform.” The government-run “insurance” plan that will “compete” with private-sector insurance companies to help slow costs and ensure that Americans aren’t getting screwed by greedy insurance CEOs who light fat cigars with copies of insurance claims they personally stamped “DENIED!”
The American public has correctly identified the “public option” as…if not fully-fledged socialized medicine, then one big step toward it. And the American public has therefore rejected it. Or is in the process of doing so.
Thus, we’re getting stories like:
A key Senate negotiator said Sunday that President Barack Obama should drop his push for a government-funded public health insurance option because the Senate will never pass it.
…"The fact of the matter is there are not the votes in the United States Senate for a public option. There never have been," Conrad said on "FOX News Sunday."
And:
The Obama administration signaled Sunday it may drop the idea of a publicly financed insurance option as part of a health care compromise.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the public option "is not the essential element."
But wait:
…by Sunday night the White House was already walking back Sebelius’ statement.
An anonymous administration official told The Atlantic that Sebelius “misspoke” and White House health reform communications director Linda Douglass released a statement explaining: “Nothing has changed. The president … believes the public option is the best way to achieve those goals.”
I know the “public option” is like garlic to a conservative vampire. Salt poured onto the slug of economic freedom. It’s anathema to the conservative worldview.
But. In the grand scheme of things, we better hope liberals and Democrats don't abandon it.
Take this paragraph from Robert Samuelson’s column last week:
Originally, Medicare covered only those 65 and older. In 1972, Congress added the disabled, now about 15 percent of beneficiaries... It also covered dialysis for kidney failure. In 2003, Congress created a drug benefit. Along the way, other services (hospice care, mammograms) were added.
Medicaid — the federal-state program for the poor — is the same story.
See, the biggest problem we face isn’t Obamacare’s winner-take-all sprint to socialism. Our biggest problem is creeping incrementalism. And should the current effort not succeed in “reforming” everything…well, you can bet it’ll “reform” something. A little bit here, a little bit there.
Think the anti-Obamacare crowds are big and scary and unbeatable? Just try to scale Medicare back – see what those protests are like. Try undoing any of the insurance mandates that already exist. See what that’s like.
Or just let me tell you: it’s bad. It’s hard. It takes a lot more political courage than your usual band of Congressmen can muster, and it sucks up political capital like a six-year-old trying to get at the very last drops of his chocolate shake.
Worse: it’s taken so long to get where we are, most of us have become used to it. It’s normal. And a dozen years from now, when Medicaid and Medicare have been expanded some more – when a few more mandates have been passed – that’ll be normal, too. Very few people will have any interest in rolling any of it back.
This isn't to say we shouldn’t try to stop Obamacare – we should. We must.
But. The big stuff, we can stop. The little stuff? I'm not so sure.
Let's hope they keep trying for the big gain, instead of settling for the nickels and dimes.
Lance Burri is a contributor to the Badger Blog Alliance and The TrogloPundit.
COMMENTS
Don’t think insurers started out greedy. They pushed the hig-cost, low-deductible, low co-pay plans as a way to get folks into doc offices early and nip expensive chronic illness in the bud.
But it didn’t work that way. The low out of pocket cost just sent folk to the doc with every cough and sore throat, and caused docs to give every test remotely applicable for the symptom, because to the patient, it was like John Blutarski belching, “Have a beer – don’t cost nuthin.”
“Greedy” insurers drove health care costs out of sight with a poor business model. Then they got to liking the profits of their ineptitude and everyone’s addiction to the security people felt in their product, the confidence of knowing that whatever broke, it would be fixed for a song.
Nobody took better care of themselves. Perhaps the opposite. This is insurers’ greatest crime: Not admitting their role in cost run-ups and then doing nothing about it last century, only recently beginning to offer lower cost high-deductible/high co-pay policies.
Penance: Insurers must begin developing policies that complement Health Savings Accounts to achieve lifelong coverage and encourage folks to take care of themselves, not simply rely on insurance to fix things as they break.
timbeaux (Tue Aug 18 06:37:55 2009)
>>> "And the American public has therefore rejected it. Or is in the process of doing so." ???
Incorrect. 70% of the public supports a single-payer system but the owners of our congress, the insurance industry, wants nothing of it. Thus Obama is rolling over, even on the "public option," which gets us closer, but that terrible word "socialized medicine" keeps creeping in.
Winston Churchill was probably the smartest of all. He said "America will always do the right thing, but only after everything else fails."
Jack Lohman (Tue Aug 18 07:58:34 2009)
A blast from the past: As a kid, not even knowing what socialism is, I remember hearing politicians warn, "Beware of creeping socialism." Under GB II, it must be said that socialism at least broke into a trot. And now, under BHO, it is in full gallop. The incrementalism that Lance speaks of is why we need to elect PRINCIPLED candidates. The alternative is to get the great compromisers who will delay our arrival at a fully socialist (and regimented and controlled) society maybe a week or two later than otherwise.
Ken Van Doren (Tue Aug 18 08:49:18 2009)
Just maybe if we spent half of this energy on educating consumers on how to take care of themselves, eat healthy and exercise many of our health care issues would diminish and we could focus on the real medical issues. Where is the consumer's accountability? Incrementalism is an issue but only because we incrementally take less and less care of ourselves. Worse yet, some don't even have the tools to really know how to.
Lisa Remiker (Tue Aug 18 12:54:30 2009)
Absolutely. Hear hear. Yes.
Jo (Tue Aug 18 16:26:54 2009)
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