Llewellyn
King
Read Llewellyn's bio and previous columns
July 30, 2009
The Health Care Fix That Dare Not Speak Its Name
Workaround is a made-up
word that came to us from the computer industry – at least, that is how
it came into general usage. In that industry, a workaround can be a
crafty piece of engineering to get the results you want without
infringing on someone else’s patent.
Watching President
Barack Obama at last week’s prime-time news conference, one had the
feeling that he was engaged in a workaround. He was selling a vague
health care reform proposal. His spiel was very long because he was
selling something that is still a work in progress. Worse: Whatever
Obama gets is not going to be the real thing. It is going to be a
workaround.
One has the feeling
that congressional pusillanimity has the Democrats and their leader
working around what at heart they know is the only solution to the
challenge of health care – a strong federal role. Call it the solution
that dare not speak its name, like Oscar Wilde’s love.
One had the feeling in
the East Room last week that the president wanted to lay down the burden
of political gamesmanship and say, “National systems work from Taiwan to
Norway, Canada to Australia; why, oh why can’t we face this reality?”
The first answer is
that no one has the courage to face the Banshee wails of “socialism”
that already echo from the right and would intensify to the sound of a
Category 3 hurricane. Politically, it would be seen as a bridge too far.
Had Obama said in the presidential campaign that he was for a
single-payer option, the Democrats on Capitol Hill might have had the
temerity to investigate what works remarkably well in Belgium and Japan,
among dozens of other countries.
Globally, the
single-payer option – or, let’s face it, nationalization – has brought
in universal coverage at about half of what the United States spends
today; let alone what we will spend with the clumsy hybrid that the
president is selling and Congress is concocting.
Under nearly all
state-operated systems, private insurers have a role. My friends in
Britain and Ireland all have private insurance for bespoke medicine
above that available on the state system. Sure, state systems are
criticized, especially in Italy (along with everything else), but not
one country that has a state system has made any political move to
repeal it. State systems are popular.
In Britain, where I
have had most experience with the National Health Service, it is the
third rail of their politics. Even the great advocate of free
enterprise, Margaret Thatcher, did not dare to even think of touching
it. Every British Tory wants to make it more efficient, but none wants
to repeal it. Thatcher repealed anything that had the whiff of socialism
about it and privatized much, including the railways, but the health
system was sacrosanct.
The issue should not be
whether we can keep every insurer alive and whether we should continue
to burden employers with the health care of their staffs and their
families, but whether a new system will deliver for all Americans at
reasonable cost.
It is probably too late
to rationalize the system all at once. There are too many interests, too
much money at stake and a pathological fear of government, fanned by the
loud few. No matter that the Tennessee Valley Authority works well, that
the Veterans Administration is a larger, and probably better, state
program than those in many countries.
It is not just in health care that Congress and the administration are
engaged in workaround. Cap-and-trade in energy is another piece of
avoidance. Utility chief, after utility chief, after utility chief –
among them, John Rowe of Exelon and James Rogers of Duke – has said that
a simple carbon tax would be more effective and cheaper than
cap-and-trade. But the same people who yell “socialist” get severe
arrhythmia at the mention of “tax.” Workaround.
© 2009 North Star
Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.
Click here to talk to our writers and
editors about this column and others in our discussion forum.
To e-mail feedback
about this column,
click here. If you enjoy this writer's
work, please contact your local newspapers editors and ask them to carry
it.
This
is Column # LK104.
Request permission to publish here. |