Ezra Klein: The danger of the status quo

[babylonsister]

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/03/the_danger_of_the_status_quo.html

The danger of the status quo

I'm continually annoyed by the punditocracy's tendency to judge the health-care bill in comparison to some ideal health-care bill (that doesn't have any votes in Congress) as opposed to the status quo. If health-care reform fails, the status quo is a certainty, while the perfect bill is but a dream. Ron Brownstein does a nice job arguing this case in his column today:

If Obama's plan fails, as President Clinton's did, it's likely that no president will attempt to seriously expand coverage for many years. The independent Medicare actuary has projected that under current trends, the number of uninsured will increase by 10 million, to about 57 million, by 2019. Providing uncompensated care to so many uninsured people would further strain physicians and hospitals -- and inflate premiums as those providers shift costs to their insured patients.

Some fiscal conservatives want to attack rising costs without expanding coverage. But that approach looks impractical, politically and economically. While Republicans controlled Congress after the 1994 election, they never built enough of a consensus to pass the cost-control ideas they are now pressing on Obama, such as medical malpractice reform. Meanwhile, Nichols warns that imposing meaningful cost control on hospitals without reducing the number of uninsured patients they must treat "would bankrupt many and strain most to the breaking point."

Weighing such factors, Nichols concludes that the "risk of doing nothing" exceeds the risk of passing the bill. In interviews, Emory University's Kenneth Thorpe and Stanford University's Alan Garber, two other leading health economists, guardedly echoed his conclusion. Both men believe that the current proposal could move faster to control costs. But both also agree that it contains valuable first steps and establishes what Garber calls "a good platform" for further reform. By contrast, Thorpe says, "under the do-nothing scenario, everything gets worse." For Democratic fiscal hawks uncertain that approving Obama's plan will cure what ails U.S. health care, the real question may be whether defeating it guarantees that the system's chronic afflictions will metastasize further.

I'd also take note of the political incentives here: If health-care reform goes down in a giant ball of flaming wreckage and Democrats lose seventy bazillion seats in the next election, not only will presidents leave this alone for awhile, they'll be very careful to avoid the unpopular parts the next time. And what were the unpopular parts? Reforms to Medicare. The excise tax. The cost controls, in other words. Conversely, pass the bill, and it's a lesson that you can pass these sorts of bills.

By Ezra Klein | March 12, 2010; 3:32 PM ET

[zipplewrath]

1. You can pass 15 year old GOP ideas

So the hope for the future is to demonstrate that you can pass 15 year GOP old ideas on health care reform? Something tells me, if this passes or not, we'll always be able to pass GOP ideas if the dems vote for them.

[Oregone]

2. 15 years old?

Did you forget Nixon's National Health Insurance Partnership Act?

[zipplewrath]

4. Obama made this claim

You're right that in many ways you can trace this piece of junk back to Nixon, but even Obama admitted that this is basically warmed over Bob Dole and Howard Baker ideas from 15 years ago. Apparently the "change we could believe in" was democrats resurrecting old GOP ideas.

[Oregone]

3. To boil down Klein's argument: one piece of shit is tastier than another

And there is never the possibility of a 3rd option ever, ever, ever being viable, so shut the fuck up and eat shit.

[babylonsister]

5. Oh, there you are! I knew a positive thread couldn't get past your

eagle eyes! :rofl:

[Oregone]

7. This is a positive topic?

Seems like a bit of demagoguery to scare people into acceptance of the Senate Bill. It also ignores the complete absolute absence of real leadership on this issue by the Democrats to create a third alternative that doesn't taste like shit.

All we get here is capitulation and then fear mongering to scare you into accepting it. It lets the Democrats completely off the hook.

As long as this remains the strategy of the day, real egalitarian health reform will never be a possibility

[girl gone mad]

8. The wunderkind needs to spend some time in the real world.

Maybe a 25 year old who has spent the entirety of his short adult life social climbing among the beltway boys and getting chummy with Michelle Malkin and other conservative bloggers doesn't actually have our best interests at heart.

[Jennicut]

9. Uh huh. So he should have decided not to write or blog or anything else. He should

have been a typical 25 year old working a not so great job and paying off student loans, thus influencing nobody.
That is kind of a ridiculous argument.

[girl gone mad]

10. Any of those things would make him a better proponent for the average person..

than long hours sipping cocktails and picking up "sexiest man" awards.

[flpoljunkie]

6. Am watching Chris Van Hollen on Hardball. He's making a great case for Obama's healthcare bill.

He's head of the DCCC. A great choice, Speaker Pelosi.