Home About Chat Users Issues Party Candidates Polling Firms Media News Polls Calendar Key Races United States President Senate House Governors International

New User Account
"A comprehensive, collaborative elections resource." 
Email: Password:

  The Conservative Case for Obamacare
NEWS DETAILS
Parent(s) Issue 
ContributorRP 
Last EditedRP  Oct 02, 2012 04:55pm
Logged 0
CategoryCommentary
AuthorJ. D. KLEINKE
MediaNewspaper - New York Times
News DateSaturday, September 29, 2012 10:00:00 PM UTC0:0
DescriptionThe core drivers of the health care act are market principles formulated by conservative economists, designed to correct structural flaws in our health insurance system — principles originally embraced by Republicans as a market alternative to the Clinton plan in the early 1990s. The president’s program extends the current health care system — mostly employer-based coverage, administered by commercial health insurers, with care delivered by fee-for-service doctors and hospitals — by removing the biggest obstacles to that system’s functioning like a competitive marketplace.

But perhaps the clearest indication of the conservative economic values underlying the act is its reception by many Democrats. The plan has few champions on the left precisely because it is not a government takeover of health care. It is not a single-payer system, nor “Medicare for all”; it does not include a “public option,” a health plan offered by a federal insurer. It is a ratification of market ideas, modified to address problems unique to health insurance.

Mr. Obama’s plan, which should be a darling of the right for these principles, was abandoned not for its content, but rather for politics. Neither side is blameless here. The White House could not have been more ham-fisted in the way it rammed the bill through Congress. The Republicans in the House and Senate lashed back with a vengeance, sifting through the legislative colossus for boogeymen like “death panels,” and when they could not find things sufficiently alarmist, they simply invented them.
Share
ArticleRead Full Article

NEWS
Date Category Headline Article Contributor

DISCUSSION