A Specter Is Haunting The Democratic Party
This article recounting the raucous meeting in Philadelphia on health care, featuring Arlen Specter and Kathleen Sebelius, misses the actual news made at the event. The rowdy crowd was interesting, but the astounding statements of Specter should be on front pages everywhere.
Specter said, in defending health care reform, mind you, that the Senate's got to do this whole thing fast--so fast that he won't fully read the bill, but will have his staff work on it to inform him of what's going on.
Perhaps on normal bills senators can't read everything (which suggests maybe they should pass a whole lot less bills), but something as important as a massive makeover of our health care system, a law that will effect billions (yes, with a "b") for generations, deserves serious deliberation from the greatest deliberative body.
Unless the idea is to put one over on the public before they realize what's happened, Specter has no answer to "what's the rush?" There's no crisis--whatever problem we have we've had for quite a while, and will continue to have. Let's take the time--months, years, whatever--we need to do this right, or not do it at all. It's certainly better not to have any bill than pass a bad one that's practically impossible to reverse.
(Sebelius was also interesting, but her doubletalk was more conventional. She explicitly opposes monopolies, but favors a public option that, because it won't have to compete in a free market way, can drive out all rival plans.)
posted by LAGuy @ 12:13 AM
9 Comments:
She explicitly opposes monopolies, but favors a public option that, because it won't have to compete in a free market way, can drive out all rival plans
Both sides repeating talking points is unhelpful. Do you find it literally unimaginable that a public option could be structured in a way where it has to compete in a free market way?
Yes, that is unimaginable.
Well, you'd better sell your shares in FedEx, then.
The analogy is flawed in so many ways I hardly know where to start. So I'll start with the most obvious. Not only has the post office been given a monopoly on many activities, it's not allowed to go out of business no matter how it's run. The essence of free market competition is if you lose enough money, eventually you go out of busienss.
I understand the analogy is flawed in many ways. However, it's the closest available and serves to prove the only point I raised here: is it theoretically possible that free market competitors will survive in the face of a government competitor. It demonstrates the answer, potentially, is yes.
This was competition arising in the holes arund the post office because extra help was needed. Sure, if the government takes over all health care (as Obama wants), you'll still get people demanding more because the government won't do enough, and it'll be done privately on a black market if it's made illegal. Still, this won't mean rival plans, but will just be addenda, just like FedEx, growing in the cracks and corners that the government allows.
Right now health care is often tied to who you work for, but there's no way to keep employers or groups or whoever insuring others when they can save money by tossing their people into government care. Obama's rules will then not allow people to get new private insurance. (He always promises you can keep what you have--not even true by itself--never you can leave one private system and go to another if you're insurance shopping.)
The whole point of any public option is not to compete, but to drive out competition, since even in a counterfactual universe where you can count on no mission creep, the government can subsidize and keep in business its health care system above and beyond what the free market can provide. Also, going against government plans becomes a criminal matter, not a civic matter. Supporters of the healthcare plan know this, which is why almost any plan will do. Once they government gets involved, it's only a matter of time before they can take over, and nothing can stop them.
Both Obama and Barney Frank, among others, have argued in earlier years that the public option will eventually lead to single payer.
The "cracks and corners," eh? USPS revenue for 2008 was approximately $75 billion. FedEx revenue was approximately $38 billion. UPS revenue was approximately $50 billion. Again, not apples to apples, but let's not pretend there's no meaningful competition going on here.
Still cracks. Direct competition with the post office is illegal. I don't deny people will get extra health care from private sources if they're allowed to (and they may not be--in other countries, it has been forbidden), but not until they're forced to subsidize trillions for government programs so they don't have to compete equally.
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