Several opinion pieces in my local paper (Washington Post) Thursday impressed me as being unusually worthwhile and constructive contributions to different parts of the national agenda. That was B.O.P.P. (Before Obama's Peace Prize), and the chaotic chorus that ensured from it, but I'd like to return to some of them now.
Two concerned the ongoing battle about health care. Martin Feldstein, Harvard Prof and President emeritus of the National Bureau for Economic Research, suggested A Better Way to Health Reform, which entails doing away with the tax deductions for health insurance and using that money ($220 billion, he says) to issue vouchers people would use to buy private catastrophic insurance. He argues that this, along with some other changes, would provide insurance to everyone now insured, and eliminate the problem of anyone going bankrupt because of medical bills, without costing any new money. It sounds good, though I'm sure there would be some snags in determining how all these things would work, and their cost. And, it assumes that insurance companies wouldn't fight tooth and nail against it, whereas I'm quite sure they would, even though it should be revenue-neutral for them. Still, it's an interesting idea.
Then there's David Broder's A Rift Between Old Allies, which tackles the "mystery" of why "broad support from American business" for health care reform has not translated into more Republican votes on (or involvement in) health care legislation. This usually astute political analyst seems to be coming to the party a little bit late. It's been evident since about February that the initial murmurs of support from payroll-businesses generally were much outweighed by big businesses in the industry. The latters' "support" was occasioned mainly by their hopes of keeping a place at the table from which to limit any changes and preserve their comfortable profits; they hoped for Lilliputian steps, when Brobdingnagian strides are required. The GOP, for its part, was more focused on political games than on serving constituents, either business or individual. The alliance survives to a degree, but only because health care businesses and the Republican Party, for different reasons, both decided their survival depended on defeating any improvement in health care. So Broder's analysis is good, and worth looking at - just inexplicably late.
Meanwhile, it's interesting to watch the Administration claiming that it still expects Republican support for reforms, even as other reports suggest no Republicans in the House will vote for existing bills. It's about time the Administration recognized that its efforts to get bipartisan support cannot succeed, and would only vitiate the reforms. That seems to be the lesson of today's reports of spending scandals in a North Dakota health cooperative, exactly the type of "coop" that Republicans have proposed as an alternative to the public option.
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