Joe Conason: At Last, Accepting Some Clues From Across the Pond

[babylonsister]

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090225_pushed_to_the_margins_finally/

At Last, Accepting Some Clues From Across the Pond

By Joe Conason


At the brink of global ruin, many Americans suddenly seem willing to consider sensible ideas that were always deemed unthinkable, and to reject foolish notions that were once deemed brilliant. Soon we may be mature enough to observe how other developed countries address problems that have baffled us for generations.

Nationalizing major banks, temporarily at least, is a radical notion that today looks far more prudent than handing over hundreds of billions of additional dollars to the clowns and crooks who wrecked the financial system. Privatizing Social Security, which meant turning over another trillion dollars to the Wall Street geniuses whose reckless greed drove us into penury, no longer appears so alluring. Even a few repentant right-wingers—notably including Alan Greenspan, the former “maestro” of money—now gaze dolefully into the mirror and wonder where they went so wrong. (Here’s a hint: The trouble began during those lonely evenings spent perusing the addled works of Ayn Rand.)

So as President Obama convened his “fiscal responsibility summit” and then delivered his first address to Congress, the voices of free-market fundamentalism were muted in Washington, if not on cable television. The anticipated onslaught against Social Security from those claiming to represent future generations did not materialize at the Obama summit—and neither did the presidential capitulation that liberals had feared. Instead, the White House wonks insisted on discussing the actual threat to America’s future solvency, namely the swelling price of health care for the retiring generation of baby boomers and its effect on Medicare and Medicaid.

snip//

In the coming decades, European countries, as well as Canada and Japan, will be able to invest their resources in energy and education, while we try to figure out how to borrow enough to keep our hospitals open. What they all have in common is that they do not devote a huge proportion of their health spending to the profits of insurance companies—and they negotiate budgets with health providers, such as pharmaceutical companies.

The superior performance of these alternatives is at long last coming to the attention of the mainstream media, which has so long ignored it.

As always, Congress will resist change on behalf of the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies, preferring to do nothing. But perhaps in the coming years the public will realize that such feckless politicians should be told to go do nothing somewhere else.

[snappyturtle]

1. I heard a bit this morning outlining the healthcare solutions that

supposedly, Pres.Obama is proposing. The proposal requires insurance companies to cover all...no pre-existing conditions. But, at what price? When I read this from the above:

"What they all have in common is that they do not devote a huge proportion of their health spending to the profits of insurance companies—and they negotiate budgets with health providers, such as pharmaceutical companies."

I hope the gov't. will negotiate but I doubt it. I don't foresee the insurance companies giving up any portion of profit.