August Rush
President Obama says we need to pass a health care bill by August. Can he give any non-political reason for this?
With the bailout, there was arguably a need for speed. Even with the stimulus (which takes over a year to have any effect) you might want to get a move on. But when it comes to massively changing how we run things in health care, there's no crisis that needs an immediate response--or if there is, the crisis has been going on for decades.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:24 AM
7 Comments:
He's backing off the August deadline. Trouble in healthcare-land?
Perhaps the urgency stems from his worry that if a couple years pass, and America realizes that he has not fixed the economy, we may become skeptical that he is able to fix health care.
So I think he should wait two years. All the stimulus stuff was supposed to be quick: we can assume that if the stimulus bills work as promised, the economy will recover by November 2010. This will result in Democratic gains and a very popular Obama, who can then use that political capital to write a health care bill.
Obama's always had good timing. The economy will improve despite what he's doing, and he'll get credit for it. As for health care, I say reform Medicare first, and then you'll have credibility.
You know, that's like the fifth time on this blog someone has made that claim about the economy -- that it's a given that it would improve quickly on its own. I know we're all too young to have lived through the great depression, but were any of you aware of what happened to Japan in the 90s?
In fact, the Great Depression was a double dip recession. See charts here: http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=8778#comments
The first recession was quite deep and more sustained than had previously been experienced (nearly 4 years). But there was a recovery, fairly substantial in fact. Then, the collection of bad gov't. policies (both domestic and foreign) drove the economy down again.
People, especially in the US, persevere. Many believe they can succeed even in the face of economic difficluties. This is why polls generally report people believing the economy is on the wrong track, while they simultaneously believe their own financial condition will improve over the next year. Many people, at least in the US, do not sit back when dealt a financial blow, but rather seek ways to become more productive, or find an advantage that can be exploited given the economic conditions. Thus Lehman Bros is gone, but Goldman just had their most successful quarter ever.
There are natural trends in the economy and generally, in every recession since the Depression, after a time of bottoming out, things bounced back up. I think the longest recession was 18 months. Even in the pre-regulatory age before the Depression, long recessions were rare. Is it possible this recession will act differently? Perhaps. But the general rule is things do down for a while, then go back up, and government policy has only so much effect on this.
Again, you're limiting yourself to the US experience. Japan's recession lasted for a good 5-6 years, all told. And I've yet to find someone who claims this recession has no potential to be worse than any since the great depression. Finally, I won't take the bait in DG's reply and mention all the folks who think the second dip was because they pulled back from stimulus plans too early. Oops.
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