| The Dilettante: Reform is essential |
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| Written by Marcus Kellis - Argonaut | ||||||
| Thursday, 10 September 2009 | ||||||
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Yesterday evening, Sen. Jim Risch, an Idaho Republican, sent a press
release with a response to President Barack Obama’s address on health
care.
An excerpt: “The President continues to promote the false choice of a
complete government takeover or doing nothing,” Risch wrote. “We
actually have another option, targeting specific areas of our current
system to make coverage affordable to all.”
Let me contrast that with what Obama said: “Since health care represents one-sixth of our economy, I believe it makes more sense to build on what works and fix what doesn’t, rather than try to build an entirely new system from scratch.” Obama has not endorsed opening Medicare for all who would like to buy into it, nor has he endorsed a plan to put all Americans on Medicare, in a system like Canada’s. He hasn’t endorsed a plan to put doctors on the government’s payroll, as the United Kingdom does. Obama’s plan is just what Risch said he wants. Risch is apparently honest enough to acknowledge the growth in health care costs is completely unsustainable, but his press release is the above-quoted sentence bookended by two others. Risch’s Web site provides nothing more substantive. On the relevant page under “Issues,” Risch lists only platitudes agreeable to anyone. In trying to avoid the failures of President Bill Clinton and the 103rd U.S. Congress in their health care plan, Obama deferred to the legislative branch, which has crafted about six different comprehensive bills. At last night’s joint session of Congress, Obama outlined goals broad and specific. Broadly, he said he’d like to provide security and stability to those with insurance, insurance to those without and slowed growth in costs for everyone. Specifically, the measures Obama endorsed to reach those goals include removing lifetime or yearly caps on coverage, preventing insurers from discriminating against those with preexisting conditions and creating an insurance exchange where the power of the free market could be harnessed effectively. In his press release and on his Web site, Risch has not spoken about any of these goals, each of them admirable and sensible. Risch’s colleague in the Senate, Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo, got to 326 words in his response. Crapo’s response seems deliberate — he sits on the Senate Finance Committee, whose chair, Max Baucus (D-Mont.) is intimately involved with crafting one of those six health care bills — and in it he implicitly endorses some of the measures Obama proposed, and remains open to voting for a final bill. But Crapo’s response hedges on the price of health care reform. (Crapo did vote in 2001 and 2003 for President George W. Bush’s tax cuts, removing trillions from the Treasury without any accompanying spending cuts, as an aside.) Health care reform on a budget is neither reform nor a bargain. As Obama outlined, curbing costs is important, even essential, but so too is expanding coverage to those without. Health care is a moral imperative. Supporters like saying nobody should go broke because they got sick — but nobody should get sick because they’re broke. Comment on this column at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it  Add as favorites (50) | Views: 780
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