{"id":361831,"date":"2010-02-25T09:30:18","date_gmt":"2010-02-25T14:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"tag:business.theatlantic.com,2010:\/\/3.36574"},"modified":"2010-02-25T10:43:30","modified_gmt":"2010-02-25T15:43:30","slug":"bipartisan-health-care-summit-all-eyes-on-the-gop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/361831","title":{"rendered":"Bipartisan Health Care Summit: All Eyes on the GOP"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s showtime! At 10:00AM this morning, President Obama and his administration will kick off a bipartisan health care summit to persuade Americans that Republicans have insufficient ideas on health care reform, and to convince Democrats to vote on a bill.<\/p>\n

Marc Ambinder’s analysis sounds spot on<\/a>. His major points are: (1) Democrats are trying to set a trap for Republicans; (2) Republicans know they’re walking into a trap; (3) So expect a lot of off-topic platitudes about the role of government generally, because let’s face it, statements like “Well yeah the CBO expects premiums to rise over the baseline of health inflation projections, but the administration proposes to offset these increases with generously scaled subsidies for low-income Americans” is not destined to be the leading sound bite on O’Reilly tonight.<\/p>\n

Here’s one thing I wanted to respond to. Marc writes:<\/p>\n

It is hard to figure out why Republicans, whose plan largely
\n addressed those with insurance, failed to address the need to expand
\ncoverage — as least politically — even though they know that it is the
\n conflict between the policies one pursues to expand coverage that clash
\n with the policies pursued to make sure people get to keep their
\ninsurance don’t pay more. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I can think of a couple reasons why Republicans’ plans don’t expand insurance:<\/p>\n

1) They’re Republicans.<\/b>
If Republicans wanted to expand the size of government to subsidize 50
\nmillion additional Americans’ insurance by 2020, we wouldn’t call them
\nRepublicans. We would call them “liberal Democrats.” Since the beginning of the health care reform debate, analysts have
\nregularly assumed that appropriately generous subsidies to help all
\nlow-income individuals have health insurance would come to about $1
\ntrillion. That $1 trillion has to come from somewhere. Democrats have
\nsuggested surtaxes, excise taxes, payroll taxes, and Medicare cuts.
\nRepublicans have countered with no cuts … except to taxes! It’s impossible to
\npay for extending government subsidies by cutting revenue.<\/p>\n

How would you expand coverage to the poor without<\/i> significant government subsidies? I don’t know that it’s possible, but I suppose you’d propose significantly reform the system along the lines of the old McCain plan: begin to end the employer tax subsidy, give families tax credits, “restructure” the insurance market somehow and slip in a federal mandate to guarantee more people are insured. The problem with this plan is that…<\/p>\n

2) Reforming the Health Care Industry is a Nightmare<\/b>
\nThe Mickey Kaus Theory of Health Care Debacle-ism<\/a>
\nis that the White House blindly followed its OMB director’s advice to make
\nhealth care reform about fiscal reform. The problem is — as Marc
\nalludes to above, and Mickey has pointed out relentlessly — fiscal
\nreform is tough and mostly unpopular. The administration says, “Let’s bend the
\ncurve,” and Americans respond,
\n“Sounds like a plan!” Then the administration finishes its sentence
\n“…with an excise tax and Medicare panels” and Americans finish their
\nsentence with “…that we hate!”<\/p>\n

Close to ninety percent of voters in 2008 had health insurance, and they like their health insurance<\/a>, making them jittery about change. So it’s not politically crazy for Republicans to counter-propose with minor reforms that “largely
\n addressed those with insurance.”<\/p>\n

This health care debate has revealed a fascinating schism in the
\nelectorate. Americans want to extend coverage to the uninsured,
\nhypothetically. But they don’t want to pay for it. Not with higher
\ntaxes, not with Medicare cuts, not with disruptive changes to the
\nhealth care system. That’s what Republicans understand, and fortunately
\nfor them, it fits snuggly into their party narrative of opposing
\neverything Obama does. The tragedy is that many honest analysts — on
\nboth sides of the spectrum — would agree that removing the employer
\ninsurance tax benefits, and beginning to fit a belt around Medicare,
\nand beginning to disrupt our byzantine and bloated health care system
\nwith various fiscal and delivery system reforms are utterly necessary.
\nSo we’re stuck with a plan that does the hypothetically popular thing
\nwell, and the utterly necessary thing not so well. There’s as word for
\nthat, I suppose, and it sounds a lot like politics<\/i>.

\n

\n Email this Article<\/a>
\n Add to digg<\/a>
\n Add to Reddit<\/a>
\n Add to Twitter<\/a>
\n Add to del.icio.us<\/a>
\n Add to StumbleUpon<\/a>
\n Add to Facebook<\/a>
\n

\n\"\"<\/a>
\n\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s showtime! At 10:00AM this morning, President Obama and his administration will kick off a bipartisan health care summit to persuade Americans that Republicans have insufficient ideas on health care reform, and to convince Democrats to vote on a bill. Marc Ambinder’s analysis sounds spot on. His major points are: (1) Democrats are trying to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-361831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361831\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}