Refocusing the Debate
Steve Benen comments on the recent Republican movement toward health care reform. His primary point, paraphrased: Whatever the plan is, it will stink; but hey, it’s still progress when Republicans get serious about a foundational issue long championed by Democrats.
Obviously, I disagree with Steve on the prejudice: We should not assume an R plan will stink. In fact, to date, a handful of R governors have been relatively astute on this challenge: Mitt, Arnold, and Missouri’s own Matt Blunt. One would hope DC leaders are equally astute and that they will, perhaps, incorporate these governors’ ideas.
I also disagree with Steve’s sweeping generalization at the end of his post, that the “state of play … is shifting in the Dems’ direction.” As I noted this morning at CS, despite all the hooplah about America “turning left,” there remains a vibrant and resilient libertarian core, a core that might accept a role for the feds in health care reform but will also resist the creation of yet another massive bureaucracy. Moreover, the Democrats’ control of Congress today is, in part, a result of an influx of conservative D’s who are often aligned (in spirit, if not moniker) with the Blue Dogs and their moderate R counterparts … <<read more>>
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7 Responses to “Refocusing the Debate”
Pete:
Benen indeed paints with too broad a brush, but there is a reason that the Mitts, Ahnolds, Matts and other Republican governors have, as you say, risen to the challenge:
What states need on a state-by-state basis is rather different than what the Republican House caucus believes they should be given in the aggregate.
This is not just true of health care-related issues in an era when the White House has tried to push more and more responsibility on the states while providing less and less money.
One of the great appeals at the gubernatorial level of S-CHIP is that like the Clinton-Republican welfare reform compromise of the 1990s, states are given great latitude in spending federal dollars in a way they believe is appropriate for their own populations.
I will be posting an S-CHIP veto override update here tomorrow, but I’ll provide a sneak peek — an override is DOA for pretty much philosophical reasons that have nothing to do with state-by-state governance.
Good points, Shaun. I’m also working on an S-CHIP followup, including insights from at least two R’s who voted for it and will probably vote for it again in a veto override attempt. Unfortunately, both of those R’s are in the Senate, where the margin was already veto-proof. In any event, thanks to the rather healthy exchange on last Friday’s CoA, I’m rethinking my own reservations about S-CHIP and hoping (as I noted in the continuation of this post at CS) that our major parties can get past disagreeing on the “what,” the principles (like universal health care), and get on to the work of hammering out the details of “how.” In that vein — notwithstanding your concerns that an SCHIP veto override is DOA, and notwithstanding my disagreement with certain of Benen’s points — I’m still encouraged by the overall spirit of the latter’s post, and the sign it perhaps represents that cross-aisle collaboration might just be more the rule than the exception moving forward.
Pete:
Amen.
IMO, when all the hoopla about SCHIP dies down, the only health care reform bill that will be passable, will be a hybrid, a compromise between ideologically purist approaches.
Hybrids pose their own problems, as we saw in the death of the immigrations bill. The spirit of compromise, then, has to be encouraged is we are ever to see a solution representing progrees.
My personal preference is universal single payer health care, operated through private channels, sort of like the French. I’ll listen to any proposal, however, that involves the compromises necessary for passage.
SCHIP is just a bnadaid, in my view, while we wait for a broder overhaul.
domajot – I think you’re right, on several of your points. Hybrids pose their own problems. The spirit of compromise must be encouraged if it is to be viable. And SCHIP is a bandaid wanting a broader overhaul.
On the French solution, I just don’t know enough about it to agree or disagree, but like you, I hunger for the compromises necessary for any proposal that will address the core issue.
We’re too wealthy of a nation, and our government spends too much on stupid things, not to do what’s right on the health of our citizens.
I tend to get the impression that what’s most important is that a Democrat majority congress not be able to get anything passed, regardless of individual house member’s beliefs. I think in many cases they are flagrantly in opposition to the wishes of their constituents but they will risk it because it can score political points and help reinforce a notion of a do-nothing “Democratic” congress. The Republicans don’t want the public to be able to look at a high-profile, in-the-public-interest program and attribute it to the Dems. This could reinforce the idea that the Democratic party is the party of the working man and middle class.
But I do agree that anything that will be approved of by the GOP will stink. Why? Priorities. The priority of every GOP plan is to subsidize the existing system of private publicly held health insurance companies and their profit margins. This includes the proposal by Matt Blunt, the man who thought that kicking almost 100,000 people off of Medicaid was a good idea and even when state revenues recovered so that everyone could be restored to the program he and his Republican allies in the legislature refused to do it. As far as his current proposal goes look at this from the Columbia Tribune
New plan, no new money and the money goes to the same insurance companies that have four times the administrative overhead as Medicaid and rely on loopholes and small print to deny claims to boost profits. Yes, it stinks.