First: 87 Ways to Satisfy Sarkozy in the Sack (and Keep Him Begging for More).
Second: Palin’s Digest: Recent Publications Summarized in 400 pages. (Yes, All of Them.)
Third: Annular Bragg Resonators: Beyond the Limits of Total Internal Reflection
Fourth: Bridge to Somewhere: 14 Fabulous Days with the McCain Campaign
Day: September 30, 2009
Invisible Hand
Ezra Klein puts this simple concept as well as I’ve yet seen:
Liberals don’t think that Congress will pass a bill outlawing private insurance. They don’t think the Supreme Court will render a decision naming WellPoint “cruel and unusual.” Rather, they think the market will, well, work: The public option will provide better service at better prices and people will choose it. Or, conversely, that the competition will better the private insurance industry and that people won’t need to choose it.
But that confidence rests on a very simple premise: The public sector does a better job providing health-care coverage than the private sector. If that proves untrue – and I would imagine most every conservative would confidently assume that that’s untrue – the plan will fail. The public option will not provide better coverage at better prices, and so it will not be chosen, and it will languish. Indeed, if it languishes, it will lack customers and thus lack bargaining power and economies of scale, and get worse even as the private insurers get better. In that scenario, the public option not only fails, but it discredits single-payer entirely.
The liberals are willing to bet that they’re right. It’s not a sneaky strategy: It’s an up-front wager. The conservatives are not, however, willing to bet that they’re wrong. They’re willing to say the public option will fail, but not give consumers the chance to decide that for themselves.
If we had a working government, maybe we’d get to try things, work for good policy, and ultimately get to the best outcome for the American people, whatever that might be. Why are the conservatives in this argument so afraid of The Market? What don’t they want us to find out?
Common Experience
See if this rings a bell with regard to your typical visit to the doctor’s office:
A [patient] walked in and was generally walked right back into a physician’s office. They get good care. They are not rushed. They are examined thoroughly
[Patients] receive top-notch, wait-free care, and money is largely no object. [Patients] pay a flat annual fee of $503, and it covers all expenses – without submitting claim forms to their insurer. Despite soaring costs throughout the health care system, prices have been largely stagnant in [this practice] for 17 years.
Man, America really does have the best possible healthcare system in the world. How could that possibly be improved upon? Plus, everybody gets a choice of 10 plans with nationwide coverage networks. Pretty fantastic, eh? Oh, wait, that’s not your experience? Oh, right, that’s the in-house health clinic that members of Congress provide for themselves. Worth noting that many who don’t even pay the paltry $503 fee still take advantage of the care.
Is it any wonder we can’t get reform passed?
Resolved: All healthcare benefits for sitting members of Congress shall be sunset effective December 31, 2009. Furthermore, all members of Congress shall be ineligible for Medicare or any other government supplied benefits for themselves or their families during their term of elected (or appointed) service beyond the normal provisions for their salary.
It’s the only way to get an honest attempt at reform.
Why not 100 votes?
Ben Nelson, (D) of Fucktardia, has lots of fascinating thoughts to share on the healthcare fight:
Voters should be able to evaluate “what’s been done and what remains to be done” before they go to the polls, Nelson said.
“Public debate can occur in the context of an election,” he added.
So, then, the outcome of the 2008 elections, the one held less than a year ago, in which healthcare was a central, if not very nearly THE CENTRAL issue, which came up in debates at the primary and national level…those elections: not to be counted. There should be several more elections, and if healthcare proponents can win each in a landslide: then and only then we can begin to consider taking up real reform.
But stopping with that sort of vaguely insane talk isn’t enough. Not for Ben Nelson:
But Nelson said 60 votes isn’t enough. The Nebraska Democrat said he’d only feel comfortable voting for a bill that he knows can get at least 65 votes.
“I think anything less than that would challenge its legitimacy,” he said.
Why stop there? Why settle for some interim position? The only possible outcome here is full commitment: that’s it, unanimous vote. Anything else would be unacceptable. And, presumably, after a unanimous vote and a Presidential signature, you’d need to let the states decide, unanimously, whether or not to implement. Why, it all makes perfect sense. It’s the only way for it to be legitimate.
[The public option is a] major step toward universal health care coverage.”
With 40 grandchildren of his own, he said, he does not want the country to go in that direction.
–Senator Jim Bunning ® wondering why, when it comes to healthcare, someone won’t please think of the children
Lemkin 