Decision ‘08

Right On The Money

I meant to highlight this Ruth Marcus editorial earlier because it’s spot-on:

If George W. Bush proposes something, it must be bad. Such is the knee-jerk state of partisan suspiciousness that when the president actually endorses a tax increase — a tax increase that would primarily hit the well-off, no less — Democrats still howl.

Such is the level of distrust that when the president finally disavows the free lunch and comes up with a program not financed with deficit spending — indeed, one that would actually bring in extra revenue as the years go on — Democrats still howl.

Listening to Democratic reaction to Bush’s new health insurance proposal, you get the sense that if Bush picked a plank right out of the Democratic platform — if he introduced Hillarycare itself — and stuck it in his State of the Union address, Democrats would churn out press releases denouncing it.

There is nothing President Bush can say or do at this point to win over his critics. They are beyond listening. The Democrats are throwing away every promise about changing the culture in Washington that they made in the wake of their historic 2006 win: they aren’t moving towards the President to seek bipartisan solutions, and they are turning their back on ethics reform at any meaningful level, with Dirty Harry Reid and Robert Pork, er, Byrd, leading the way…

9 Responses to “Right On The Money”

1 Fargus Says:
January 24th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
Mark, there’s lots of quite coherent, quite detailed, very very reasoned discussion in the more intellectual corners of the liberal blogosphere about the opposition to Bush’s proposed health plan. You may well be right that there’s a lot of people who would oppose anything he proposes simply because it’s him proposing it, but this is one instance that certainly does not prove that case. You and others on the right may not agree with the reasons, but there are plenty of reasons for a thinking, principled liberal to be against Bush’s health care proposal.
2 Peter Says:
January 24th, 2007 at 9:06 pm
I think that the article mischaracterizes Bush’s proposal. As I understand it, it is not a tax increase as much as a redistribution of the tax burden. Moreover, those who take the hit are not the top wage earners who have received so much from the Bush administration: it is those workers who have relatively generous health care plans (principally union workers). So the implication that it is funded by the “well-off” is misleading. (Of course, there are many high wage earners who also have “generous” health care plans — but any reduction in their tax benefits is a far smaller percentage of their income than for hourly workers).

There is quite a lot of daylight between Bush’s proposal and the Democratic party platform. This is not to suggest that the Democratic platform holds all of the answers — far from it — but to expect the Dems to endorse the Bush proposal simply because there is a change in the tax burden is unreasonable.

The solution to the health care problem, in my opinion, is to do things like ration health care, take lawyers out of the malpractice process, and indemnify companies which make vaccines. However, no politician wants to stand up and tell voters why it is not rational for the government to refuse to pay for their 85 year old grandfather’s triple heart bypass surgery.
3 Mark Says:
January 24th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
Ration health care? Perish the thought…

Hey, I’m not sure how great the President’s plan is myself, not knowing all the details, but to declare it DOA the very night of the speech certainly doesn’t lend itself to the view that it has been seriously considered.

I should also point out that it would probably hit me where it hurts, because I have just about the best health care coverage you could possible have, and my employer pays 100% of the premium…
4 Fargus Says:
January 24th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
I wonder how I, as a federal employee, would be affected.
5 eddie Says:
January 24th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
It’s funny,I thought the exact same thing with last years SOTU. Within five minutes the dems were on the tube denouncing and criticizing virtually everything Bush said. I often wondered what would happen if he took the dems side on every issue, or just came out and recited the “Pledge of Allegiance”, and walked off. I can somehow still see the dems disagreeing even though it would be against their own opinions. Bush=Bad. As an aside, what a surprise that Dirty Harry is trying to tone down their “ethics cleansing” rhetoric. He’s the biggest hypocrite of the whole lot.
6 Anonymous Liberal Says:
January 24th, 2007 at 9:50 pm
Sorry Mark, but Marcus’ column is an example of knee-jerk dem-bashing at its worst. The president’s health care proposal is not “a plank right out of the Democratic platform”, it’s a plank right out of the Cato Institute platform. It’s bad policy. There are literally dozens of posts out there today explaining the myriad reasons why this proposal is bad policy, why it’s regressive, why it would hurt the middle class and poor, why it would dilute the risk pool and encourage employers to provide worse health care packages, etc. etc. All of these posts are written by liberals who have a real interest in and knowledge of health care policy. Marcus doesn’t have the first clue what she’s talking about.

Moreover, Dems have shown a willingness to work with Republicans on health care issues. Just recently, Ted Kennedy helped Mitt Romney steer a health care bill through the Massachusetts legislature. He did this even though it would help Romney politically and was not the kind of proposal Kennedy thinks is best.

Plus, the entire premise of the column makes no sense. The legislative branch, which is charged with creating law, is controlled by the Democrats. Bush should be the one willing to listen to their proposals, not vice versa. The Republicans have had 6 years to do something about health care and have done absolutely nothing. The Democrats, on the other hand, have literally thousands of health care proposals they’ve come up with over the years that the Republicans have refused to allow to see the light of day. If Bush wants to provide some input to the legislative process, he should, but why on earth should he get to dictate the agenda? He introduces some silly plan in his sixth state of the union and suddenly the Democrats are supposed to drop everything and enact some feeble half-assed Cato institute bill that would accomplish nothing? Please.
7 Muffin the Cat Says:
January 24th, 2007 at 10:51 pm
There’s quite coherent, quite detailed, very very reasoned discussion in the more intellectual corners of the liberal blogosphere

Point it out. Where?

I personally do not feel that there is any solution to health care in this country that will make people happy. The people of this country have a one track mind concerning health care. They want it all, they want it now, and they do not want to have to pay for it. Note the last portion of that sentence. The American public has an insatiable demand for health care and then it wonders why the costs keep increasing as the demand escalates. The public wants the latest and greatest medical equipment to diagnose whatever ails them no matter what the cost. They feel it is their “right”.

Health care is no more than just another commodity subject to basic economic theory. Few people actually understand this concept. If the American public wants totally unrestricted, non-rationed health care, something is going to have to give. Dollars will have to be taken from some other commodity to pay for it. Somebody is going to get hurt economically. The money will have to come from somewhere.

The unfortunate part of the health care debate is that the politicians are leading the people to believe that they will get totally unrestricted health care if some sort of national health care system is instituted. Any procedure or drug, anytime, anywhere, cost be damned and someone else will be paying for it. The first time that someone dies due to rationed care, the lawyers along with their friends the cockroaches will come out of every nook and cranny.

Peter is 100% correct in his last paragraph but it isn’t going to happen. No politician in their right or left mind is going to tell the average American that they are just as much to blame for the rising health care costs if not more than the insurance companies, hospitals, government, or doctors. In all the discussions I have read about health care, no one seems to put part of the blame back on the American public. It is always everyone else that must change to lower costs not them. We eat too much, smoke too much, drink too much, and don’t exercise enough. We take terrible care of ourselves on the average but we expect medical care to be there to “save us” from our actions. We are our own worst enemies on this issue. We need to be thankful for what we have already.
8 Fargus Says:
January 24th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
Point it out? Washington Monthly, Ezra Klein, Matthew Yglesias, our friend Anonymous Liberal, etc. They’ve all got thoughtful posts detailing exactly why they dislike the President’s proposal. It’s anything but knee-jerk.
9 too many steves Says:
January 25th, 2007 at 5:52 am
The editorial talks about the reaction of “Democrats” to President Bush’s SOTU address, not that of liberal intellectuals who are discussing the merits of national healthcare. The point stands and is accurate I think. Healthcare is just the latest example of destructive partisanship (not confined to Democrats) at the expense of reasoned policy debate.

But if we’re talking about healthcare, look at what is going on with the much-talked-about Massachusetts plan. Personally I don’t understand why healthcare for individuals is a public policy and government issue. And as Muffin says, everyone wants everything, simultaneously unwilling to pay the price in premiums or accepting of constraints on available services.