To me the healthcare reform debate is not just or even primarily about healthcare reform. It is about logic and rhetoric – about how people think and speak. I might completely disagree with your views on healthcare reform. But can you defend those views honestly? logically? I can respect that.
There are least two mantras one hears from the Obama Administration concerning opposition to his reform proposals.
- Those who disagree with him do so from ill motives (they are greedy or cruel or do not care about people and so on). In fact the president invokes this nearly every time anyone disagrees with him about anything.
- Those who criticize or oppose the healthcare reform plan currently on the table (a) just want to keep the status quo and (b) have no solution of their own.
Let me focus on the second one. It often goes hand-in-hand with the “well – we have to do something” argument which truly is a poor argument.
Driver: “My car won’t start”.
Mechanic: “It needs a new transmission”.
Driver: “I don’t know what the answer is – but I know that isn’t it”.
Mechanic: “Well – we have to do something“.
Actually – no. It is entirely acceptable and reasonable to say “I might not know exactly what the answer is – but I know what you propose is not it and will just make things worse”. Although I understand and sympathize with the common “oh yeah? do you have a better idea? then we will do this my way” argument there are times when the only(?) idea on the table is obviously problematic.
Except in this case it is not the only idea on the table at all.
Charles Krauthammer reminds us – for the umpteenth time – that conservative and Republican and whatever critics of Obama-Pelosi-Reidcare have for a long time on numerous occasions proposed reforms. It is not that they (we?) want to keep the status quo and have no alternatives to propose. We do have a healthcare reform plan. The problem is that the president and Nancy Pelosi and the Decmoratic leadership do not like it.
In a nutshell this is what Krauthammer (along with many others) proposes:
- Tort reform. One of the biggest wastes of money in healthcare is extra and unnecessary tests just for the purpose of avoiding possible malpractice suits. And malpractice insurance is a significant chunk of what healthcare costs.
- Get rid of the link between health insurance and employment. More specifically (a) give to employees what their employer spends on health insurance and (b) tax that amount.
- Allow insurance companies to compete across state lines.
I do not necessarily agree with all the details Krauthammer adds to #1. And frankly I do not like the idea of paying taxes on the total amount I-plus-my-employer spend on health or any other insurance – although I recognize that it makes a great deal of sense and is just plain fair. Finally I do not entirely understand #3 – I like the idea of competition and shopping around but surely a good federalist would want to say something about not all states being the same.
But here is the point:
But that’s a political problem of Obama’s own making. As is the Democratic Party’s indebtedness to the trial lawyers, which has taken malpractice reform totally off the table. But that doesn’t change the logic of my proposal. Go the Reagan-Bradley route. Offer sensible, simple, yet radical reform that strips away inefficiencies from the existing system before adding Obamacare’s new ones — arbitrary, politically driven, structural inventions whose consequence is certain financial ruin. [emphasis added]
Read the whole thing at Townhall. And no you do not have to register.
