Why Health Care Reform is in Trouble

The Blind Faith of Demo­c­ra­t­ics on Health Care Reform

One Sur­pris­ing Rea­son Health Care Reform is in Trouble

Some on The Left are wor­ried that it may be The Left that kills health care reform:

I’ve warned before that it could turn out to be the left which kills health care reform and we see another exam­ple of this mind set in a post by Scott Lemieux. He expresses dis­sat­is­fac­tion with some of the com­pro­mises which are under con­sid­er­a­tion, which is under­stand­able, but goes on from there to sug­gest that if the final [health care reform] bill doesn’t con­tain every­thing he wants we should just let it die (Demo­c­ra­tic Val­ues Blog).

A com­men­ta­tor, pre­sum­ably lib­eral, with a mix of cat­a­strophic think­ing and a blind faith in gov­ern­ment super-mega com­plex solu­tions to prob­lems, sug­gest any step for­ward on health care reform is bet­ter than no step:

We need to start chip­ping away at the cur­rent sta­tus quo or NOTHING WILL EVER HAPPEN. There is no way that either side will ever com­pro­mise and we will be stuck in this pathetic par­ti­san BS until we are all either dead or unin­sured and dying.

EVERYONE needs to be mature enough to know that any step for­ward is good for the coun­try as a whole.

Another com­menter echoes in with:

For as much as I would like to see Uni­ver­sal Health­care or at least a Pub­lic Option included in the final bill that gets signed by Obama, I agree … that it is bet­ter to take what we can get.

Rea­son #2 Health Care Reform is in Trou­ble: The Blind Faith of Demo­c­ra­t­ics on a Health Care Reform Bill That’s Too Com­plex to Humanly Grasp

Have any lib­er­als actu­ally read this bill and under­stood it? I seri­ously doubt it because the health bill is prob­a­bly too com­plex to grasp:

Olympia Snowe, it seems safe to assume, is fol­low­ing the health care debate a bit more closely than the aver­age American.

So it is say­ing some­thing that the Maine sen­a­tor — a key fig­ure in health care nego­ti­a­tions — admits she is stumped by the task of craft­ing a sim­ple expla­na­tion for leg­is­la­tion of mind-numbing complexity.

“If any­body can give me an easy, 30-second solu­tion to this multitrillion-dollar prob­lem, be my guest,” said Snowe, a mod­er­ate Republican.

A Demo­c­ra­tic law­maker, Rep. Collin Peter­son of Min­nesota, agrees. “The mem­bers don’t even under­stand what’s in it,” he con­fessed of the leg­is­la­tion. As for his con­stituents? They are “not exactly sure what this is about, and they’re not really sure whether they like it or not.” (Is the health bill too com­plex to grasp?)

Demo­c­ra­tic elites may have blind faith in the out­come of the leg­isla­tive health care reform process, but every­day peo­ple don’t — they can’t have blind faith because it’s their health care that’s on the line:

The per­cent­age of Amer­i­cans who believe they will be worse off if health care reform passes — 21 per­cent — has dou­bled since Feb­ru­ary, accord­ing to a July track­ing poll by the Kaiser Fam­ily Foun­da­tion, while the 39 per­cent who believe they will be bet­ter off has remained rel­a­tively stag­nant. On Wednes­day, a new National Pub­lic Radio poll found oppo­si­tion to Obama’s health care reform plan near­ing the 50 per­cent mark. (Is the health bill too com­plex to grasp?)

Far too many lib­er­als like to blame “right-wing scare tac­tics” and “out right right-wing lies” on the turn of the tide, but really — peo­ple just don’t trust that con­gress really under­stands what to do to reform health care:

… many peo­ple think they at least know more than leg­is­la­tors. Gallup found this week that nearly half (48 per­cent) of peo­ple think they have a good under­stand­ing of the health reform issue, while only 27 per­cent think this is true of mem­bers of Con­gress. (Is the health bill too com­plex to grasp?)

The ques­tion is: what exactly do “many peo­ple” think they know? I doubt “many peo­ple” really feel they under­stand the health care reform bill bet­ter than their legislators.

Instead, what “many peo­ple” feel is that the hard-core lib­er­als in con­gress seem to have not a sin­gle clue that the health bill is too com­plex to grasp the con­se­quences.  These “many peo­ple” are no fools.

So how can lib­er­als have such con­fi­dence that “it is bet­ter to take what we can get” in the government’s attempt to reform health care by tak­ing over a larger per­cent­age of it? Easy. They are fools.

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The Real Goal of Demo­c­ra­tic Health Care Reform

 

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If you’re inter­ested in read­ing about pro-market solu­tions to our cur­rent health care cri­sis, visit Cato On Health Care Reform or check out these links:

Stud­ies

• • “Health-Status Insur­ance: How Mar­kets Can Pro­vide Health Secu­rity,” by John H. Cochrane, Pol­icy Analy­sis no. 633, Feb­ru­ary 18, 2009
  • “A Bet­ter Way to Gen­er­ate and Use Comparative-Effectiveness Research,” by Michael F. Can­non, Pol­icy Analy­sis no. 632, Feb­ru­ary 6, 2009
  • “Does the Doc­tor Need a Boss?,” by Arnold Kling and Michael F. Can­non, Brief­ing Paper no. 111, Jan­u­ary 13, 2009
  • “Med­ical Licens­ing: An Obsta­cle to Afford­able, Qual­ity Care,” by Shirley Svorny, Pol­icy Analy­sis no. 621, Sep­tem­ber 17, 2008
  • “A Gift of Life Deserves Com­pen­sa­tion: How to Increase Liv­ing Kid­ney Dona­tion with Real­is­tic Incen­tives,” by Arthur Matas, Pol­icy Analy­sis no. 604, Novem­ber 7, 2007

Articles/Op-eds

• • “Let Cus­tomers Con­trol The Money And Mar­ket Will Cure Health Care,” by Michael F. Can­non, Investor’s Busi­ness Daily, July 16, 2009
  • “Obama Doesn’t Have the Only Pre­scrip­tion for Health­care Reform,” by Michael D. Tan­ner, Los Ange­les Times, July 5, 2009
  • “The Non-Debate over Non-Reform,” by Arnold Kling, National Review (Online), June 24, 2009
  • “Reform Must Empower the Con­sumers,” by Michael D. Tan­ner, Roll Call, June 8, 2009
  • “‘Health Sta­tus Insur­ance’ Pro­vides Real Alter­na­tive To Uni­ver­sal Care,” by John H. Cochrane, Investor’s Busi­ness Daily, March 30, 2009
  • “McCain’s Plan Is Sound,” by Michael F. Can­non, New York Post, Octo­ber 9, 2008
  • “Inno­vate to Cut Health Costs,” by Shirley Svorny, Los Ange­les Times, Octo­ber 6, 2008
  • “How to Fix Health­care Deliv­ery,” by Arnold Kling, The Amer­i­can, June 17, 2008
  • “Vot­ers Send Mixed Mes­sages on Health Care,” by Michael D. Tan­ner, Orange County Reg­is­ter, June 13, 2008
  • “Mar­kets Beat Gov­ern­ment on Med­ical Errors,” by Michael F. Can­non and Alain Enthoven, Amer­i­can Spec­ta­tor (Online), May 13, 2008
  • “Con­gress Mess­ing with Your HSA,” by Michael F. Can­non, Orange County Reg­is­ter, May 12, 2008
  • “Healthy McCain,” by Michael F. Can­non, National Review (Online), May 8, 2008
  • “McCain’s Health Care Plan: Rad­i­cal and Right,” by Michael D. Tan­ner, Orange County Reg­is­ter, May 6, 2008
  • “McCain’s Plan Bests Obama’s,” by Michael D. Tan­ner, The Hill, April 15, 2008
  • “The Cost’s the Thing,” by Michael D. Tan­ner, National Review, March 12, 2008
  • “Free-Market Course,” by Patrick Basham, National Review (Online), March 10, 2008
  • “Friends Want Friends to Do Health Care,” by Michael F. Can­non, National Review (Online), Octo­ber 16, 2007
  • “Well Treated: The Road to McMed­i­cine,” by Arnold Kling, TCSdaily.com, Octo­ber 10, 2007
  • “Fix Health Care by Mak­ing Amer­i­cans Care About Costs,” by Michael F. Can­non, USA Today, Sep­tem­ber 5, 2007
  • “How to Cover Them,” by Michael F. Can­non, New York Sun, August 28, 2007
  • “The Uni­ver­sal Dis­trac­tion,” by Arnold Kling, TCSdaily.com, August 7, 2007
  • “Debat­able Assump­tions,” by Arnold Kling, TCSdaily.com, July 25, 2007
  • “Let Go of the Sta­tus Quo,” by Michael F. Can­non, New York Sun, July 6, 2007
  • “Two Health Care Doc­u­men­taries,” by Arnold Kling, Wash­ing­ton Times, June 30, 2007
  • “‘Sicko’ Health Care Reform,” by Michael D. Tan­ner, Cop­ley News Ser­vice, June 29, 2007
  • “Michael Moore Goes Sicko on Health Care Reform,” by Michael D. Tan­ner, Examiner.com, June 18, 2007
  • “I’m Not Going to Pay a Lot for This MRI,” by Michael F. Can­non, Weekly Stan­dard, June 15, 2007

Pod­casts

• • “Choice, Com­pe­ti­tion Should Drive Health Care Reform” fea­tur­ing Michael D. Tan­ner, July 15, 2009 [Flash Audio, 05:19]
  • “Health Care: Fos­ter­ing Focus Fac­to­ries” fea­tur­ing Regina Her­zlinger, June 26, 2009 [Flash Audio, 08:43]
  • “Ideas for Free-Market Health Care Reform” fea­tur­ing Rep. Paul Ryan, June 19, 2009 [Flash Audio, 08:26]
  • “Coor­di­nated Care Ver­sus Gov­ern­ment” fea­tur­ing Arnold Kling, Jan­u­ary 26, 2009 [Flash Audio, 11:25]
  • “Cut­ting Need­less Health Care Spend­ing” fea­tur­ing Michael F. Can­non, Feb­ru­ary 25, 2009 [Flash Audio, 08:46]
  • “Three Bad Health Reform Plans” fea­tur­ing Michael D. Tan­ner, Decem­ber 23, 2008 [Flash Audio, 05:51]
  • “Would McCain­Care Yield Cov­er­age for John McCain?” fea­tur­ing Michael F. Can­non, May 27, 2008 [Flash Audio, 06:06]
  • “Wyden-Bennett Ver­sus Health­care Mar­kets” fea­tur­ing Michael F. Can­non, May 19, 2008 [Flash Audio, 07:02]
  • “McCain Backs Mar­kets, Dereg­u­la­tion in Health Care” fea­tur­ing Michael D. Tan­ner, May 5, 2008 [Flash Audio, 07:01]
  • “Push­ing Par­ity for Men­tal Health” fea­tur­ing Michael F. Can­non, March 24, 2008 [Flash Audio, 06:36]
  • “The Tax Code and Large Health Sav­ings Accounts” fea­tur­ing Michael F. Can­non, March 17, 2008 [Flash Audio, 10:42]
  • “McCain and Obama on Health Care” fea­tur­ing Michael D. Tan­ner, Feb­ru­ary 25, 2008 [Flash Audio, 05:08]
  • “State Health Insur­ance Man­dates Raise Prices” fea­tur­ing Michael F. Can­non, Feb­ru­ary 19, 2008 [Flash Audio, 07:03]
  • “Reg­u­la­tion Blocks Con­ve­nience Clin­ics” fea­tur­ing Michael F. Can­non, Feb­ru­ary 11, 2008 [Flash Audio, 08:07]
  • “Cut Med­i­cine in Half” fea­tur­ing Robin Han­son, Octo­ber 2, 2007 [Flash Audio, 07:36]
  • “Count­ing the Unin­sured” fea­tur­ing Michael F. Can­non, Sep­tem­ber 4, 2007 [Flash Audio, 08:08]
  • “Dr. POTUS” fea­tur­ing Michael D. Tan­ner, August 30, 2007 [Flash Audio, 06:07]
  • “The Anti-Universal Cov­er­age Club” fea­tur­ing Michael F. Can­non, July 20, 2007 [Flash Audio, 06:54]
  • “Cost Insu­la­tion or Health Insur­ance?” fea­tur­ing Arnold Kling, Feb­ru­ary 5, 2007 [Flash Audio, 08:39]
  • “The President’s Health­care Pro­posal” fea­tur­ing Michael F. Can­non, Jan­u­ary 24, 2007 [Flash Audio, 06:42]

Books

• • Healthy Com­pe­ti­tion, by Michael F. Can­non and Michael D. Tanner
  • Cri­sis of Abun­dance: Rethink­ing How We Pay for Health Care, by Arnold Kling

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Tagged as: Health Care Reform, Liberals