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Health Reform

I’m with Paul Krugman - pass it now, fix it later.  There is no alternative.

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 22nd, 2010 at 1:51 pm and is filed under Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to “Health Reform”

  1. Wally Erb Says:
    January 22nd, 2010 at 7:52 pm

    David:
    Face it. Much to the relief of incumbents, health care reform is a dead issue. Unwanted by the majority of non-party affiliated voters who ultimately decide election outcomes, incumbent Democrat are tripping over-themselves to get out from under the flak

    r

  2. LittleDavid Says:
    January 23rd, 2010 at 6:18 am

    I guess I am in agreement with Mr Krugman and even (gasp) David Campbell.

    I am not sure the Senate bill will pass constitutional muster. Even if it is ruled unconstitutional, we will have made some progress (I guess only I would call such a “setback” progress… grin).

    I’ll explain a little bit. I think most Americans want improvements to health care. They want the elimination of pre-existing condition restrictions for example. Well if it is unconstitutional to force citizens to obtain health care insurance, the only path forward would be to provide them health care coverage whether they like it or not. Socialized health care would pass constitutional muster as long as we depend on the precedence provided by previous Supreme Court rulings to make our case before them. It is pretty difficult (although not impossible) for the Supreme Court justices to rule against the precedence of previous Supreme Court rulings.

    Let us get started on this long difficult journey. Let us pass the Senate bill and at least start to get things rolling.

    Failure to do anything and allowing Republican opposition to define what is acceptable will not show any progress. They seem to bow to the populist demand for removing the pre-existing conditions exclusions but their proposals do nothing to increase the pool of those paying into the system to provide for the additional expense. Their proposals do not pass the common sense test. If we put them in charge, we will end up with increased health care premiums from private insurers as a result.

    I am hopeful that the Senate bill is passed and then found to be unconstitutional. It will prove what I think. The only real solution is a socialized health care system. If the majority of citizens demand a solution they are going to faced with two choices. Socialized health care or doing nothing.

    Now just how heavily socialized should our health care be? Well that is still open to debate. I am going to argue for limits on it to keep it affordable. There would still be room for private insurance to pay for the more expensive health care services that government does not provide.

  3. David Campbell Says:
    January 24th, 2010 at 3:34 pm

    The defeat of health reform this year would only be a political victory for Republicans. In every other way, we would all lose.

  4. David Campbell Says:
    January 26th, 2010 at 9:53 am

    Congress is considering postponing health reform and climate change legislation to focus on jobs. Don’t they know they are inextricably linked?

    According to a new study, health reform would create 400,000 this decade and eventually up to 4 million jobs in the U.S.

    President Obama recently announced tax credits to create clean energy jobs and researchers at the University of California found that comprehensive clean energy and climate policies would create up to 1.9 million new jobs in the U.S.

  5. David Campbell Says:
    January 27th, 2010 at 2:11 pm

    To preempt one Republican objection, the budget reconciliation process has been used by the Senate previously to pass welfare reform, the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts, and health care programs like SCHIP, COBRA, and Medicare Advantage. Does anyone remember the outrage?

  6. sizzix big shot Says:
    March 25th, 2010 at 3:21 pm

    I normally jump all over the web because I have the tendancy to read a lot (which isn’t always a great idea because most blogs just copy from each other) but I want to say that yours contains some real substance! Thanks for stopping the trend of just being another copycat site! ;-)

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