Charles Krauthammer – yes healthcare reform but not *this* way

Posted on November 27, 2009 by Rick

I have before addressed the contemptible lie that conservatives (and Republicans – the two overlap but are not always the same) are against healthcare reform because they support the “status quo”. Conservatives do support healthcare reform. We like the idea of healthcare coverage for everyone. But we also believe results and reality are at least as important as good intentions.

Once again Charles Krauthammer – dubbed “Critic-in-Chief” by National Review – nails it. He points out what is dreadful about the healthcare reform bill being debated in the Senate and then offers an alternative reform plan in outline:

Worse, they [the hundreds of regulations and boards the healthcare reform bill establishes] are packed into a monstrous package without any regard to each other. The only thing linking these changes — such as the 118 new boards, commissions and programs — is political expediency. Each must be able to garner just enough votes to pass. There is not even a pretense of a unifying vision or conceptual harmony.

The result is an overregulated, overbureaucratized system of surpassing arbitrariness and inefficiency.

Read the whole thing at Townhall.

I do have mild concern about two points commonly raised by conservatives: (1) tort reform and (2) interstate competition.

Do not misunderstand me. I support them. But I have come across occasional articles by conservatives explaining why they might not help as much as we think. That there is a potential downside to tort reform. And interstate competition might actually make the situation worse. Unfortunately I did not note and bookmark those articles. I vaguely recall coming across them at American Thinker. But I did find this:

“The truth of the story,” producer Sarah Koenig explained, “is a little more complicated, a little less Machiavellian.” In 2001, Aetna was losing $1 million a day. Aetna did two things to turn the company around: It raised premiums, and it pulled out of markets where it did not have a large presence. It turns out, the less competition an insurance company faces in a particular market, the cheaper it can price its products, and the lower premiums are for the insured. Why? Because insurance companies have to wield a lot of clout in order to bargain effectively with the large health-care provider groups in a given area.

Read the whole thing at National Review Online.

I do not entirely understand that last point – perhaps someone else can explain it.

Remember – most conservatives support healthcare reform and healthcare for all Americans. Krauthammer states: “Insuring the uninsured is a moral imperative” (emphasis added). Pretty strong language. But conservatives also care about reality and results. If we are going to do something – we need to do it right. In a way that makes things better – not worse.

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  • Jonathan

    Great column by the #2 commentator in the cosmos very pointed discussion of Krauthammer’s thoughts. I favor national competition for insurance. I also favor “thoughtful” tort reform (evildoers and the careless will always be among us).

    What concerns me is that Republicans and Conservatives are setting themselves up for a huge and longterm failure on this issue. THE issues here is the cost of healthcare, not the availability of health insurance. As all real conservatives know, cost is a function of supply and demand (I throw up in my mouth a little when I hear a particular Nobel prize winning politician and a particular Nobel prize winning economist talk about “bending the cost curve down” as though it were something that we could do if we just squeezed our triceps hard enough). We (conservatives) at least talk as though we believe that since nothing, on earth, is in infinite supply, the best means of distribution is via a market as unencumbered by gov’t regulation as possible.

    As it stands, a significant portion of this supply has been artificially removed from the market by the Medicare programs and for Medicaid and Medicaid type programs. In other words, a big chunk of supply is now being taken up by folks who either end up receiving more of the supply than they’ve paid for or by folks who’ve paid little to nothing for the supply.

    If folks on the right and in the center are successful in stopping the folks on the left from expanding this already unsustainable situation to include folks who could afford some supply, then what? We’ll still have the problem of healthcare costs increasing faster than any measure of inflation. And what few folks on the right seem willing to discuss is the fact that in order to impact the cost curve, we’re going to have make significant changes to how much of the supply is taken up by those elderly who haven’t paid for it.

    I’m not opposed to taking care of our elderly. What I’m opposed to is treating any area of healthcare as a third rail.

  • http://www.livethetrinity.net Rick

    As always I look forward to your comments. Thanks!

    Wait – “third rail”?

    I am reminded of the rather execrable movie “Disclose” (1994) starring Michael Douglas and Demi Moore. Which does however contain a very significant lesson. If you recall the “problem” is when Meredith (Moore) sues Tom (Douglas) for sexual harassment. Meanwhile there are production problems with hard drives coming from a new factory in Thailand. Tom of course destroys Meredith’s accusation. But Tom still gets anonymous messages about “you haven’t solved the problem”. What problem? The problem with the hard drives silly! He focused so much on the harassment charge that he still hasn’t solved the *real* problem – which he then does.

    I have always thought that was a shining jewel of a lesson in an otherwise forgettable piece of dreck.

    What I hear you saying in a sense is the Republicans need to wake up and “solve the (real) problem”.

    For what it’s worth NPR has been running a series of report on the health care debate and had one show in which they explained how/why MRIs are so much cheaper in Japan than in America. Their conclusion (or should we say “argument”) was “the government said that they can only cost so much – and no more”. Propaganda? Probably. But does make one wonder. Do not misunderstand – I still believe in the market.