Why Democrats are Fighting for a Republican Health Plan (Guest Voice)
Mar 20th, 2010 | 12 responses
WASHINGTON — Here is the ultimate paradox of the Great Health Care Showdown: Congress will divide along partisan lines to pass a Republican version of health care reform, and Republicans will vote against it.
Yes, Democrats have rallied behind a bill that Republicans — or at least large numbers of them — should love. It is built on a series of principles that Republicans espoused for years.
Republicans have said that they do not want to destroy the private insurance market. This bill not only preserves that market but strengthens it by bringing in 32 million new customers. The plan before Congress does not call for a government “takeover” of health care. It provides subsidies so more people can buy private insurance.
Republicans always say they are against “socialized medicine.” Not only is this bill nothing like a “single-payer” health system along Canadian or British lines. It doesn’t even include the “public option” that would have allowed people voluntarily to buy their insurance from the government. The single-payer idea fell by the wayside long ago, and supporters of the public option — sadly, from my point of view — lost out last December.
They’ll be back, of course. The newly pragmatic Rep. Dennis Kucinich was right to say that this is just the first step in a long process. We will see if this market-based system works. If it doesn’t, single-payer plans and public options will look more attractive.
Republican reform advocates have long called for a better insurance market. Our current system provides individuals with little market power in the purchase of health insurance. As a result, they typically pay exorbitant premiums. The new insurance exchanges will pool individuals together and give them a fighting chance at a fair shake.
Republicans now say they hate the mandate that requires everyone to buy insurance. But an individual mandate was hailed as a form of “personal responsibility” by no less a conservative Republican than Mitt Romney. He was proud of the mandate, and also proud of the insurance exchange idea, known in Massachusetts as “The Health Connector” (the idea itself came from the conservative Heritage foundation). Romney had a right to be proud. As governor of Massachusetts in 2006, he signed a bill that is the closest thing there is to a model for what the Democrats are proposing.
Don’t believe me on this? On The Wall Street Journal’s opinion page earlier this week, Grace-Marie Turner — criticizing Romney from the right, it should be said — noted the startling similarities between the plan he approved and the one President Obama is fighting for.
“Both have an individual mandate requiring most residents to have health insurance or pay a penalty,” she wrote. “Most businesses are required to participate or pay a fine. Both rely on government-designed purchasing exchanges that also provide a platform to control private health insurance. Many of the uninsured are covered through Medicaid expansion and others receive subsidies for highly prescriptive policies. And the apparatus requires a plethora of new government boards and agencies.”
She added: “While it’s true that the liberal Massachusetts Legislature did turn Mr. Romney’s plan to the left, his claims that his plan is ‘entirely different’ will not stand up to the intense scrutiny of a presidential campaign, especially a primary challenge.”
What does it tell us that Republicans are now opposing a bill rooted in so many of their own principles? Why has it fallen to Democrats to push the thing through?
The obvious lesson is that the balance of opinion in the Republican Party has swung far to the right of where it used to be. Republicans once believed in market-based government solutions. Now they are suspicious of government solutions altogether. That’s true even in an area such as health care where government, through Medicare and Medicaid, already plays a necessarily large role.
As for the Democrats, they have been both pragmatic and moderate, despite all the claims that this plan is “left wing” or “socialist.” It is neither.
You could argue that Democrats have learned from Republicans. Some might say that Democrats have been less than true to their principles.
But there is a simpler conclusion: Democrats, including President Obama, are so anxious to get everyone health insurance that they are more than willing to try a market-based system and hope it works. It’s a shame the Republicans can no longer take “yes” for an answer.
This column is licensed to appear on TMV in full. (c) 2010, Washington Post Writers Group
12 Responses to “Why Democrats are Fighting for a Republican Health Plan (Guest Voice)”
The Dem and lib interests and politicians are all lining up to get past the GOP and over the goal line.
The herd on the Left and the stampede to join is laughable. Even E.J. the water boy is “contributing.”
Of course the republicans will demonize anything the democrats advocate, including reflections of their own principles. Is it any wonder that so many people have written off the GOP as completely uncredible? Personally I think it's unfortunate the democrats didn't fight for the HCR that was truly needed. Ah well, standards in the 21st are down, down, down…
Man, DLS, you are so Above It All.
You are so above it all you're basically on the moon at this point.
Hey, barkeep, this fellow sure is above it all. Pour a flagon of *the best* for him. It's on me.
I swear I hadn't seen this post or article before writing my response to DLS in the “Time Out! America »
House Democrats to Take Separate Vote on Senate HCR Bill” thread. Like any sane person it's terrifying to find out I have any areas of agreement with any of the Washington Post columnists. I shall rethink my positions in their entirety rather than accept that any Washington Post columnist has stuck, even, accidentally, onto a logical, defensible position.
This is a bill that could have been written by George W. Bush and the Republicans but the Republicans oppose it and the Democrats support it because DC politics has become an irrelevant spectator sport.
I have been working on my taxes this weekend so I can hardly say DC politics is irrelevant. Let's say that DC politics has become an end unto itself rather than a way to get things done.
Kansas lost to Northern Iowa. There is a contest paying a million dollars to anyone who had a perfect card with every game picked correctly. I doubt there is anyone left with a perfect card half way through the second round.
There's an excellent article just up over at crooksandliars.com on what the Republican “NO” vote will be telling the American people.
Specific details (w/ links) on the 10 points is over at Crooks and Liars: “The 10 Republican No's on Health Care”
Simple question, simple answer. All of out republican/ democrats and democrats/republicans are owned by the oligarchy. Find that strange? You should look at Canada's elections for the last twenty years.
Your virginity has been punked.
“I swear I hadn't seen this post or article before writing my response to DLS in the “Time Out! America »”
You were okay, though you missed the obvious, that the Republican label is only coincidental and is very weak, because the Dems obviously sought far much more originally and what we are seeing now is very much reduced from that — it's what was finally arrived at after all the reductions, and only coincidentally is “Republican-like.”
FYI, Merkin, the thread you're thinking of is “House Democrats to Take Separate Vote on…”
It is more than a small kernel of truth. It's also similar to Nixon's proposal in the early 70's. In fact I think this is the reason Obama thought he would gain Republican votes for the bill. It is a measure of how far to the right the Republican party and the country as a whole has moved in the last thirty years that a largely traditional Republican proposal is now considered ’Lib-Dem’, which I assume means Liberal Democratic.
One could argue that philosophically the current proposal is not all that far from the Republican's 401k’ization of health care proposal McCain used in the 2008 campaign and which was the Senate Republican's health care proposal before then. That proposal used tax code changes to extend health care to fewer people who currently don't have it at a greater unfunded cost to the federal government than the current bill. In the Republicans' defense the purpose of their bill wasn't to increase coverage but to allow companies to drop their health care coverage while letting them keep the money they had been spending on it, similar to what the 401k provisions did for pensions in the 1980's. And of course, to make sure high income earners benefited from the reform, always a priority for the Republicans.
But it did establish that the Republicans accepted that the federal government should spend large amounts of money for health care. That it was alright to increase the national debt to do it, just as they did for Medicare type D drug coverage and Medicare Advantage. I assume this is what you mean by “even though the GOP has sought other things”.
The greatest weakness of the current bill actually is one of its Republican aspects, one also in the McCain proposal. That was that this would be done using private, for profit companies. What this means is that the best hope is for a bending down of the cost curve instead of cutting into the administrative fat of the for profit companies that makes ours the most expensive health care in the world. We accepted the Republican's call for a uniquely American system when we can see that every other Western democracy has found a system delivering affordable universal health care to their citizens at an average cost of half of the United States' cost by not relying so heavily on the for profit companies. .
Does this mean that we should always use private enterprise to provide social needs even when they are really inefficient at doing it? We have established with the current health care reform that we will when the cost is twice as much. Republicans are quick to call any government mandated expense a 'tax'. When will they or any of the Democrats supporting this bill explain why we have to pay this 100% 'tax' on health care?
Ah, where would the team be without you in your cheerleader uniform?
E. J. Dionne, Jr. is clearly right. Obama did in the end adapt/adopt the republicans plan to beat them. I am still amazed that it took so long for team Obama to find traction. Obviously the Anthem debacle helped but I'm not sure that was even the biggest factor. Obama's in-house team just doesn't seem to cathect as a unit. Since the inauguration R. Emanual has not brought a lot of cohesion to Team Obama. Reagan, GHW Bush, Clinton had folks like Jim Baker, Geo Shultz, Robert Rubin, etc. that gave much gravitas to ideas, positions and policy. The could also muster the troops and negotiate with the opposition. It seems Team Obama lacks the elements of unity and persuasiveness. I wish I had paid more attention to Dionne's article earlier.