E.J. Dionne thinks this week — the week of the health care summit — “will determine the shape of American politics for the next three years.”
Even if it’s not as momentous a week as Mr. Dionne suggests, I hope it does (at the very least) mark the beginning of the end of the unproductive ways in which the debate has, so far, been framed.
Case in point: Published in today’s NYT, five leading conservatives offer their thoughts on reform. First up is former Senator Bill Frist, who writes …
The most powerful way to reduce costs (and make room to expand coverage) is to shift away from “volume-based” reimbursement (the more you do, the more money you make) to “value-based” reimbursement.
That suggestion is consistent with the conclusion reached by Atul Gawande in his article, “The Cost Conundrum,” published in The New Yorker last summer.
In addition, the Senate-approved version of health care reform offers a nod to the merit of Frist’s suggestion. According to Jonathan Rauch, the Senate bill “includes programs designed to identify better payment methods.”
That’s presumably not enough for Frist or his counterparts who are still serving in the Senate, and if they wish to strenghten this path toward “better payment methods,” they should, by all means, offer ideas for doing just that. But when they offer those ideas, they might consider dropping the character attacks exemplified by the first paragraph of Frist’s contribution to the NYT’s round-up of conservative ideas …
President Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have failed at health care reform. They have failed because they fundamentally don’t believe in markets, incentives and the power of hundreds of millions of people to make smart choices about their health. It’s just not in the Democratic leaders’ DNA.
I have trouble believing that such chest-thumping rhetoric will do anything to advance the search for common ground.