Sink or Swim-The GOP’s Dickensian fix for health care.

[babylonsister]

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/sink-or-swim


Sink or Swim-The GOP’s Dickensian fix for health care.
Jonathan Chait



When you consider the differences between Democrats and Republicans on health care, you probably think in terms of scale. Democrats want to enact a big reform, while Republicans favor incremental progress. House Minority Whip Eric Cantor coos, “We want to take a much more commonsense, modest, incremental approach, trying to address the first issue first, which is cost, and then go on to try to deal with some of the things that the president and Speaker Pelosi want to do.” Within a recent six-month span, Republicans on the Senate floor used the phrase “step-by-step” to describe their approach to health care an astonishing 173 times.

The reality is quite different. What separates the two parties is not how far to go, but in which direction to go. The divide is simple. Democrats propose to shift resources from the rich and the healthy to the poor and the sick. Republicans want to do just the opposite. Republican health care plans reflect the party’s increasingly widespread belief that good health, like other forms of prosperity, is a matter of personal responsibility. Democratic plans to help the sick at the expense of the healthy therefore amount to socialism.

Health insurance, if you think about it, is a redistribution scheme. It transfers money from the winners (people who don’t need much medical care) to the losers (people who do). It differs from other redistribution schemes because, unlike programs that redistribute from rich to poor, the winners and losers can’t be sure in advance which category they’ll be in. That’s why people enter into it voluntarily--today I might be healthy, tomorrow I may contract some horrible disease.

The problem with this system is that, while you can’t be certain who will win and who will lose in the medical lottery of life, you can make some educated guesses. The health insurance industry is good at making those guesses, and getting better all the time. The business of insurance is to keep expensive customers out and cheap customers in.

Left to their own devices, millions of Americans could not afford to buy health insurance, because their expected medical costs are too high--they’re the losers of the medical lottery--or their incomes are too low. Obviously, many Americans are left to their own devices, with horrifying results. But many more are not, because they’re lucky enough to get insurance through their job. In an office insurance pool, everybody pays the same rate, meaning the healthy subsidize the sick.

The Democrats’ health care plan aims to create pools for people outside of the employer market, joining healthier individuals together with the sick, so that the former effectively subsidize the latter. The common element of all the Republican plans is to do the opposite-to separate the healthy from the sick.

more...

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/sink-or-swim?page=0,1

[Enthusiast]

1. Ayn Randian, Dickensian, whatever you want

to call it, it has been fully embraced by the GOP. It is not limited to the sphere of HCR, either. It extends to every facet of life in the 21st century.

The American people would reject this but the right's dialog is carefully couched as not to reveal their true aims. Again, in this the media is complicit.

[CurtEastPoint]

3. SO well stated, Enthusiast. The media drives their message.

And their goals do extend into all facets of life. Our goal, therefore, should be to constantly expose the truth because America, yes, WOULD reject them if the truth gets out.

[Enthusiast]

4. Yes, they must keep

their true goals secret. And they are doing a marvelous job of it.

[izquierdista]

2. People who are employed are already a healthier pool.

People who miss too many days for illness soon find themselves without jobs (and the health insurance that goes along with).

[Demeter]

5. Clarity!

So take that bipartisanship meme and stick it where the sun don't shine!

But take this to its logical conclusion and you get to UNIVERSAL SINGLE PAYER--OR AT LEAST, MEDICARE FOR ALL.

[DavidDvorkin]

6. It's extremely unfair to call this "Dickensian"

Dickens portrayed such social and legal situations in order to preach against them. His preaching - or the popularity of his novels, at any rate - helped reform England.

[Enthusiast]

7. The term Dickensian is almost always

used in this way. The Dickensian world (meaning the world his characters inhabited-he grew up in) was a place I don't want to revisit. But it looks like we are on the fast track. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens

[DavidDvorkin]

10. I know it is

And it always bugs me.

[Moosepoop]

8. The "incremental" approach so espoused by the Republicans

is being championed quite a bit here lately, too. Odd, that. :yoiks:

[Democrats_win]

9. Ideology allows the reality of the rich pissing on everyone while making enormous profits.

While the rich receive trillions in bailouts so that they can build two extra swimming pools, they begrudge free health care for hard working Americans. Yet they twist the ideology into making us think that they deserve more. In fact, they deserve less. It's only the politics of ideology that gives them anything.