Question: What should a Health Care Reform bill look like?

Two words: Public option.  Note that this modest, hardly even progressive measure does not amount to a “government takeover” of health care.  Actually, I wish it did, but it doesn’t even come close.  Save for curbing some of the most outrageous abuses of the private insurance industry, President Obama’s health care plan will leave this market largely unchanged.

A public insurance option accomplishes two indispensible goals of reform by lowering costs and increasing coverage.  If every American had the option of a public insurance plan, private insurers would be compelled to lower their premiums in order to remain competitive.  Compared to the rising cost of premiums in the status quo, this measure would provide an effective tax cut for all Americans.  The choice of public insurance would also provide coverage for many of the 30 million Americans who currently can’t afford it.

Costs will only come down, however, if health reform includes an individual mandate – a requirement that all Americans purchase health insurance.  This rubs many libertarians the wrong way, but it shouldn’t.  Even those who are convinced of their invincibility will fall ill.  Those individuals push the cost of their care onto the rest of society, and their absence from the ranks of the insured hurts the bargaining power of individuals to demand lower premiums from their insurance providers.  Even then-Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney advocated the implementation of an individual mandate as a matter of “personal responsibility.”

If these measures bring down costs, increase choice and competition and compel Americans to exercise greater personal responsibility, why is there so much opposition on the right?  Easy.  Republicans are using the playbook from 1993 – the last time they killed health care reform.  As in the case of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, welfare-state programs inherently undermine the GOP’s knee-jerk “no-government-is-good-government” position.  In 1993, opposition to health care reform was shrewd political strategy.  In 2009, the situation is no different.

To Discuss this issue, please see all three of our editor’s viewpoints, and comment here.

Tags: National

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 8th, 2009 at 3:58 pm and is filed under The Editor's Desk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.