Health Insurance Reform

Steven Pearlstein, the business columnist for the Washington Post, is a must read today.

While holding themselves out as paragons of fiscal rectitude, Republicans grandstand against just about every idea to reduce the amount of health care people consume or the prices paid to health-care providers -- the only two ways I can think of to credibly bring health spending under control.

When Democrats, for example, propose to fund research to give doctors, patients and health plans better information on what works and what doesn't, Republicans sense a sinister plot to have the government decide what treatments you will get. By the same wacko-logic, a proposal that Medicare pay for counseling on end-of-life care is transformed into a secret plan for mass euthanasia of the elderly.

Government negotiation on drug prices? The end of medical innovation as we know it, according to the GOP's Dr. No. Reduce Medicare payments to overpriced specialists and inefficient hospitals? The first step on the slippery slope toward rationing.

Can there be anyone more two-faced than the Republican leaders who in one breath rail against the evils of government-run health care and in another propose a government-subsidized high-risk pool for people with chronic illness, government-subsidized community health centers for the uninsured, and opening up Medicare to people at age 55?

Health reform is a test of whether this country can function once again as a civil society -- whether we can trust ourselves to embrace the big, important changes that require everyone to give up something in order to make everyone better off. [My emphasis.] Republican leaders are eager to see us fail that test. We need to show them that no matter how many lies they tell or how many scare tactics they concoct, Americans will come together and get this done.

If health reform is to be anyone's Waterloo, let it be theirs.

Meanwhile, over at the NY Times, Paul Krugman is saying this:

... right now Mr. Obama’s backers seem to lack all conviction, perhaps because the prosaic reality of his administration isn’t living up to their dreams of transformation. Meanwhile, the angry right is filled with a passionate intensity.

And if Mr. Obama can’t recapture some of the passion of 2008, can’t inspire his supporters to stand up and be heard, health care reform may well fail.

That "prosaic reality" and "dreams of transformation" claptrap is pure Krugman. He mocks Obama's supporters, then says they're the only people who can get health insurance reform to pass. Krugman still thinks Obama is going to lose in November 2008.

Finally, take a look at the reports of the tea bagger protesters being reported at Talking Points Memo here, here, and here.

This does not bode well for the future of this country. Has the Republican Party damaged the American political process beyond repair? Are we never again going to be able to accomplish great things? Is our future going to be held captive to ignorant mobs?

We'll see in the next few months.

Addendum: Andrew Tobias has a very worthy post on health care in America here.