Universal health care became a bad joke during Clinton’s first term. It’s now back on the radar screen, the joke forgotten, the deadly seriousness of this issue locked at the top of many minds, and new support arriving from unexpected places.
According to an opinion piece by Ezra Klein in today’s LA Times:
In California, the heads of Kaiser Permanente — a historical “good cop” insurer amid the almost cartoonish villainy of the industry — have proposed a serious, albeit extraordinarily complicated, plan for achieving universal coverage in the Golden State. The details of the plan are unimportant; it’s the constructiveness of the proposal that matters.
And joining them in calling for reform is Schwarzenegger, who recently seized on a report by the New America Foundation showing that cost-shifting caused by the uninsured population costs each family in the state the equivalent of $1,186 in annual premiums. His plans for reform will be announced at the State of the State address Jan. 9.
The work is not done, of course. There are arguments yet to be had, wars yet to be fought.
Insurers want to retain their ability to discriminate against the ill and the old; conservatives want individuals to assume more risk and expense in order to force wiser health decisions; liberals want the government to guarantee universality and utilize its massive market power to bargain prices down to levels approximating those paid by other developed countries.What’s important, though, is that for the first time since the early years of the Clinton administration, these arguments are being made, and employers, insurers, politicians and, most crucially, voters are making their way back to the table.
The realization that our illogical, mistaken healthcare system can’t go on forever has dawned, and so it will end. The question now is what replaces it.
Were it not for insurance, our family is one among many that would have to pay a couple thousand dollars a month, out of pocket, for life-sustaining medicines. We have been fortunate. Others have not. And that’s something — as Klein writes elsewhere in his commentary — that “the country’s conscience won’t countenance,” at least not forever and hopefully not for much longer.