Category Archives: Marketplace of ideas

Would you run this cartoon?

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Aria08sketch8

Here’s one of the many cartoon ideas Robert Ariail had today, in sketch form. We went for something else in the actual paper for tomorrow, but this was one of the sketches Robert gave thestate.com for use in this package.

I made sure senior editors down in the newsroom were aware of the cartoon (thestate.com is part of the newsroom, and therefore separate from my department), so they could make a conscious decision about it before it appeared.

The question I had raised about the cartoon earlier with Robert was … well, never mind the concern I raised. I’d rather not prejudice your response. After y’all have a chance to say what you think, I’ll tell you what I think. (I’ll only tell you that if you’re one of those simple souls who don’t know me at all and think all newspaper editors are about political correctness, you’ll probably guess wrong as to what my concern was.)

So … whaddya think?

Our plan for letters

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Just FYI, in case you’ve sent in a letter to the editor related to the primaries…

Normally, we avoid running letters related to an election on the day of, or even the day or two before, to avoid getting into a situation of running something that quite fairly demands a reply, and there would be no time left for that (and while that is usually self-evident from the text of the letter, it isn’t always). But give the high interest in these votes, and the pace at which things are happening, I came up with this plan for the next few days, which we’ll try to implement to the extent that letters fitting these categories are available and confirmed in time:

  • Wednesday’s and Thursday’s pages: Give preference to letters about the GOP primary, with a particular preference to folks replying to our Sunday endorsement of John McCain.
  • Friday’s and Saturday’s pages: Continue to run letters on the GOP primary (which, of course, is Saturday), but give preference to those that are an argument for a candidate, rather than attacks and criticisms of other candidates (there being no opportunity for anyone to respond).
  • Sunday’s, Monday’s and Tuesday’s pages: Turn to letters on the Democratic primary, which is the following Saturday. Most letters on the GOP primary would be outdated and/or irrelevant after that vote has already taken place, particularly since they would not reflect the results. (Note that our production schedule demands that the Monday page be done before the Sunday one.) These letters would have to be in by Friday morning at the latest, since the MLK holiday forces us to have all pages done through Tuesday by the time.

By the way, the holiday will not be a day off for us, even though it is for the newspaper buildingwide. We’ll all be here dealing with endorsement stuff. But because we’re in here to deal with that, there would be no time for redoing the Tuesday pages. As it is, getting letters ready for publication to meet this schedule is going to be a stretch for our staff.

Anyway, in case you’re still a snail-mail person (and believe me, lots and lots of folks are), that’s the plan.

And of course, as you know, this venue is open to you 24/7.

Here’s what’s wrong with American politics

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Here’s what’s wrong with American politics. The first of our letters to the editor on today’s page summed it up pretty neatly:

…(W)hile Sen. Barack Obama is an incredible orator and inspires hope for a
post-partisan future, the reality of American politics is partisan.
Astute voters realize this and want the candidate who is best suited to
fight the Republican Party. Hillary Clinton and her team have gone
toe-to-toe with the Republicans and beaten them more often than not.

What’s wrong with American politics, of course, is attitudes such as this letter writer’s. I say this not to endorse Barack Obama or condemn Hillary Clinton. Nor do I mean that this writer is a bad person. In fact, I think it’s a friend of mine (it’s a fairly common name, but I didn’t bother to check; who wrote it is irrelevant).

The problem is the staggering fatalism set forth in that paragraph, the refusal even to allow the possibility of something better than the madness these parties inflict upon our country: "The reality of American politics is partisan." Well, yeah — as long as neither you nor anyone else wants to try for anything better.

But the essence of what’s wrong is the next sentence: "Astute voters realize this and want the candidate who is best suited to fight the (fill in the blank) Party."

The worst candidates are the Democrats who are all about fighting the Republicans, and Republicans who are all about fighting the Democrats. The very best candidates, whatever their labels, are the ones who can see how pointless most of that fighting is, and have the vision and ability to lead us past it.

We need the UnParty, now more than ever.

Clock running out on GOP endorsement

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Folks, not much has changed since my Sunday column with regard to our upcoming endorsements. As you’ll recall, our plan is to endorse in the GOP primary Sunday (Jan. 13), and in the Democratic on the following Sunday. In each case, that means we’ll be publishing the Sunday before the respective primaries.

Even though we’ve had our invitations out to the major candidates since
last summer, only McCain, Brownback, Huckabee and Biden chose to take
advantage of the opportunity before the last minute. That makes this year somewhat unusual for us — an unfortunate result of the compressed primary schedule this year, which caused some campaigns to avoid even thinking seriously about South Carolina before this morning. In 2000, McCain, Bush and Keyes all came in with time to spare. In 2004, Edwards, Lieberman, Dean, Gephardt and Carol Moseley-Brown all came in early enough to allow careful consideration. Only Kerry waited until the very last minute, which created a problem (since we didn’t think we should deliberate until we’d heard from him), one which we vowed to do our best to avoid this time.

Here’s what I sent my publisher earlier today by way of an update, since he and I didn’t have a chance to speak today. Since I’ve been tied up with internal editor stuff today, keeping me from posting as much as I did yesterday, I thought I’d just go ahead and share it with y’all as well:

I need to tell you these three things:

  • No word from any of the campaigns yet on interview appointments. At this point, the only Republican I’m still trying on is Romney. It would be a mistake on his part not to come in, so I still have some hopes in that quarter — but it likely will be very short notice when it comes. Giuliani is apparently not going to spend any more time in SC (other than going to the debate in MB tomorrow). Thompson had wanted to come in, but has apparently changed his mind, which is OK … that’s one we would have agreed to on request, but were not particularly seeking. Remember, we’ve already talked with McCain and Huckabee.
  • Now that they’re all turning their attention to SC — and now that Sen. Clinton is NOT going to skip our state (as most folks thought yesterday), I’m optimistic about getting them [the top Democratic candidates] in next week. Still no appointments, though. With things changing this fast, everybody is trying to keep their options open as to where they want to be when. Among the Democrats, the ones that most concern us are Clinton and Obama. The only Democrat we’ve already interviewed was Joe Biden, and he dropped out last week.
  • As discussed, we’ve decided to release our GOP endorsement (which will run Sunday) early on thestate.com. We’ll put it out there at 3 p.m. Saturday. We’ll do the same the following week with the Democrats. At Mark Lett’s [executive editor, the guy over the newsroom] request, I’ve given the newsroom all my contact numbers in case of media inquiries regarding the endorsement coming through the newsroom. I’ll give Kim Dalglish [the newspaper’s marketing director, who might also receive inquiries, and who might want to promote the endorsements] a heads-up on all this as well.

Remember, our [editorial board] discussion about our GOP endorsement will be at 9:30 a.m. Friday (UNLESS Romney agrees to come in, and the only time he can come is Friday). I’ll be writing that editorial and a column, and paginating the page, starting the instant that meeting is over.

That schedule — assuming everything goes well — is about as tight as we can make it, and still have a page out in time for all board members to read the proofs and raise any questions or problems. That’s standard operating procedure with every day’s page, but it is particularly important to avoid shortcuts on such a high-profile endorsement. Procedurally, something like this is sort of the opposite of this blog, which is a more or less stream-of-consciousness thing that no one looks at but me before it’s published. Since we operate by consensus on editorials, I don’t want any member of the board to feel left out on this. (Warren Bolton will be coming in on his day off, by the way, since we were unable to get this done before Friday, thanks to the campaigns’ procrastination.)

For more on this subject, I refer you to an comment I posted on an earlier post, in response to something Doug Ross had said:

Doug (way back up at the top),
transparency has always been my main goal in writing columns, and that
goes double for my blog. Why on Earth would I spend this time doing
this otherwise?

No invitation has been extended to Ron Paul
— or to Dennis Kucinich, Tom Tancredo, Mike Gravel or Duncan Hunter.
But had any of them wanted to come in over the last few months, we
would have made time. We’ve already had our interviews with McCain and Huckabee.
They did a wild and crazy thing that too few campaigns have done — the[y]
accepted back when invitations were first extended to them and the
other main candidates. Late summer, as I recall. (You’ll recall that Brownback and Biden also came in — before dropping out.)

Giuliani, Romney, Clinton, Obama, Edwards and Thompson were all
invited way back then, and invitations have been re-extended since then.

At this point, Giuliani seems to have decided to skip SC, so I’ll be
surprised if he comes in before we make our decision on Friday. The one
candidate I’m MOST concerned with getting in here before Friday, then,
is Romney. I must have talked to four different people in his camp
yesterday (some more than once), reiterating our invitation.

For Romney (and, if a miracle happens, for Giuliani), we will sweep
all other work aside to make time. And BECAUSE we’re trying to keep
these last few hours open for them, I’m not going to bug Thompson any more (I asked again yesterday when Mr. Thompson was here);
nor am I going to extend a last-minute invitation to Dr. Paul. If he
had asked before this week to come in (as Thompson did, as recently as
the last couple of weeks, although he offered no times, which is why I
gave them another chance yesterday), he would have been welcomed.

That’s what I know as of now.

Health care advocacy with, um, gusto

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A regular commenter sent me a message saying "Now this is a universal healthcare lobbying group that has some real ‘cajones‘…"

Assuming that he meant "cojones" (a "cajón" is a chest or locker or box of some sort), I have to agree. This is from the group’s ad in USA Today Monday. Below a newspaper clipping with the headline, "Cheney Treated in Hospital for an Irregular Heartbeat," the ad said:

If he were anyone else,
he’d probably be dead
by now.

The patient’s history and
prognosis were grim: four
heart attacks, quadruple
bypass surgery, angioplasty,
an implanted defibrillator and
now an emergency procedure to
treat an irregular heartbeat.
For millions of Americans, this
might be a death sentence. For the
vice president, it was just another
medical treatment. And it cost him
very little.
Unlike the average American, the president, vice
president and members of Congress all enjoy
government-financed health care with few
restrictions or prohibitive fees. They are never
turned away for pre-existing conditions or denied
care for what an insurance company labels
“experimental treatments.”
The rest of us deserve no less.
We call on the presidential candidates to support
HR 676, the National Health Insurance Act—
an expanded and improved
Medicare for all that:
• provides complete medical,
dental, vision and long-term care
• eliminates deductibles, co-pays,
hidden fees
• allows you to choose your doctor, lab,
hospital, health care facility
• is completely portable and not tied to
employment
• is free from interference or second-guessing by
insurance companies.
Let’s talk about real solutions. Forcing people to
buy insurance doesn’t provide better or more universal
care. It just pads the pockets of the insurance
companies. Medicare for all puts health care
decision-making power back where it belongs—
in your hands.
Traditional Medicare for all—the single best
cure for what ails us.

This was brought to us courtesy of the California Nurses Association and the National Nurses Organizing Committee. The Web address of their effort is http://www.guaranteedhealthcare.org/.

Another group for (unspecified) health care reform

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Y‘all know that in the past, I’ve brought attention to AARP’s election-year effort to get the candidates for president to talk more about health care reform. You will recall that, in order to broaden its appeal, AARP expresses no preference for any particular plan.

You may also recall that I find this, in the end, frustrating. I much prefer the approach of Physicians for a National Health Program, which makes no bones about it’s advocacy for single-payer. In a world in which real reform (and real reform does not mean bringing the "uninsured" into the same private-insurance system that the rest of us are increasingly unable to afford) is such an uphill climb, we need more voices coming out for single-payer, or something else just as comprehensive, something just as likely to move the needle in a positive direction.

But I don’t mean to pick on the AARP. Theirs is one of many efforts by broad-based groups who are staying general so as to stay, well, broad-based.

I heard from another one today: The Alliance for Health Reform, whose mission statement says:

A nonpartisan, nonprofit group, the Alliance believes that all in
the U.S. should have health coverage at a reasonable cost. But we do
not lobby for any particular blueprint, nor do we take positions on
legislation. Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia is our founder
and honorary chairman and Senator Susan M. Collins of Maine serves as
honorary co-chairman. The diverse board includes distinguished leaders
from the fields of health care, business, labor and consumer advocacy.
Ed Howard, an attorney long active in national health care issues,
heads the Alliance’s staff.

Since 1991, the Alliance has organized more than 200 forums in
Washington and around the nation, each presenting a balance of expert
views. Our forums on Capitol Hill have become so popular that we often
receive more than 250 registrations in a day’s time. We cosponsor an
annual retreat for senior congressional legislative staff dealing with
health matters. We have briefed reporters, editorial writers and
producers in newsrooms across the country on health policy debates in
Washington and how they affect local citizens. The Alliance also has
published five highly regarded guides for journalists on covering
health issues, with a sixth scheduled to appear this fall.

Great. Thanks. But we’ve had forums (fora?), we’ve had retreats, we’ve got highly-regarded guides out the wazoo. What we need is some serious, hard-edged advocacy for some solutions.

And speaking of solutions, here’s my favorite.

What’s a ‘mainstream Republican?’

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Remember this David Brooks piece I called to your attention yesterday? I continue to be fascinated by the way "conservatives" are pulling their party apart, to the point that pundits not of their persuasion have trouble describing the viscera thus exposed.

Mr. Brooks wrote of how a nouveau kind of guy like Mike Huckabee can take on the various aspects of the GOP coalition embodied by "Rush Limbaugh, the Club for Growth and even President Bush" and prevail. In today’s paper we have David Broder and George Will trying to describe the same GOP elephant from different angles.

David Broder, a man whom I greatly respect even though he has an unshaken faith in the importance of the political parties that I believe are the ruination of America, is clinging to the definitions and alliances with which he is familiar. For instance, he uses the term, "mainstream Republicans," as though it is a term that is still easily understood, and therefor meaningful to the reader. He uses it here:

    …But McCain and Huckabee have yet to build broad constituencies among
mainstream Republicans. Huckabee’s following is centered among
evangelical Christians, who dominated the low-turnout Iowa caucuses.
McCain’s greatest appeal is to Republican-leaning independents who
powered his 2000 victory and who remain loyal to him….

And again here:

    …That opens at least something of an opportunity for Rudy Giuliani and
Fred Thompson to demonstrate their ability in Florida, South Carolina
and other states that were part of George W. Bush’s political base. The
mainstream Republicans in those states are still looking for a
candidate…

What do you suppose he means, in the Year of Our Lord 2008? Is a "mainstream American," in his usage, a mainstream American who happens to be a Republican, or a Republican partisan who happens to be at some ideological midpoint in his own party — which is not the same thing at all? I suppose he means the latter. In any case, he seems to be speaking of some theoretical type who remains loyal to "Rush Limbaugh, the Club for Growth and even President Bush," and is untroubled by any of the associations — if such still exists.

Or maybe he’s thinking of the folks, to be found commenting on this post, who see Fred Thompson as the last Paladin of a "conservatism" which I have asked them to define, because the word by itself means little nowadays.

Or maybe he’s talking about George Will, as being among the Old Guard of pundits. Here’s part of what he wrote for Sunday:

    Like Job after losing his camels and acquiring boils, the conservative
movement is in distress. Mike Huckabee shreds the compact that has held
the movement’s two tendencies in sometimes uneasy equipoise.

    Social
conservatives, many of whom share Huckabee’s desire to “take back this
nation for Christ,” have collaborated with limited-government,
market-oriented, capitalism-defending conservatives who want to take
back the nation for James Madison. Under the doctrine that
conservatives call “fusion,” each faction has respected the other’s
agenda. Huckabee aggressively repudiates the Madisonians.

    He and
John Edwards, flaunting their histrionic humility in order to promote
their curdled populism, hawked strikingly similar messages in Iowa,
encouraging self-pity and economic hypochondria. Edwards and Huckabee
lament a shrinking middle class. Well…

Mr. Will (whenever I type "Mr. Will," I hear Sally Field addressing John Malkovich in "Places in the Heart") misunderstands the difference between Huckabee’s and Edwards’ brands of populism, between hope and anger. He just knows he doesn’t like populism. Neither do I, generally speaking, but I can tell that there’s a chasm the happy kind espoused by Mr. Huckabee and angry kind pushed by Mr. Edwards.

In any case, conservatism, like liberalism, ain’t what it used to be. And considering the way those ideologies have been defined for the last three decades or so, that’s a good thing.

Pay no attention to that man on the blog

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Folks, please disregard the error published on this CBS News blog yesterday, headlined "S.C. Paper Asks Thompson to Drop Out," which said:

GOFFSTOWN, N.H. — The largest newspaper in South Carolina is asking Fred Thompson to drop out of the Republican nomination and endorse John McCain. 

    “It’s time for him to do the principled thing,” writes The State’s
editorial page director, Brad Warthen. “He should bow out, and support
McCain. And he should do it now; now is when he can make a difference.”

    The editorial from the Columbia, South Carolina, paper comes at a
time when Thompson is getting ready to focus all of his attention on
South Carolina, after finishing third in Iowa and admitting he is “not
competitive” in New Hampshire…

First, it wasn’t "an editorial." Editorials actually DO speak for the newspaper as an institution, and reflect the consensus of the editorial board, NOT of an individual. So the headline is wrong — this "S.C. Paper" said nothing at all on the subject.

Anyway, when I saw people were being directed to my site by CBS, and followed the link to that blog item (by a guy named "John Bentley") and found the error, I tried posting a comment there, as follows:

I’d like to request a correction.

This "S.C. Paper" has not said a word about Fred Thompson. It’s just a thought I happened to share on my blog. No one else on our editorial board had anything to do with it; in fact, I doubt that anyone else is even aware that I said it, since I posted that on a weekend and they all have other things to do.

It’s OK to say the editorial page editor [and not the editorial page "director;" what is THAT, some TV term?] said it, but The State did NOT say it.

As I said in a column (which is ALSO personal opinion, and does not speak for The State), "Such are the pitfalls of blogging. Some folks mistake my passing observations for final conclusions and (an even greater mistake) my opinions for those of the whole editorial board."

For more on that subject, here’s a link:
http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/2008/01/its-now-or-neve.html

Anyway, please take note of this problem. I don’t wish to embarrass my colleagues by the world thinking they are somehow responsible for my personal eruptions.

So, to play on the allusion I used in my Friday column, pay no attention to that man behind the blog — especially not the erroneous one … but don’t attach to much importance to this one either. My thoughts are what they are — my thoughts. And I wouldn’t even want anyone to think they are MY final word on the subject, since one of the purposes of editorial board discussions is to make each other think a little more — as I also suggested in today’s column.

Passing of the GOP Old Guard

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Check out the David Brooks column we ran in today’s paper, particularly these paragraphs:

    Huckabee won because he tapped into realities that other Republicans have been slow to recognize. First, evangelicals have changed. Huckabee is the first ironic evangelical on the national stage. He’s funny, campy (see his Chuck Norris fixation) and he’s not at war with modern culture.
    Second, Huckabee understands much better than Mitt Romney that we have a crisis of authority in this country. People have lost faith in their leaders’ ability to respond to problems. While Romney embodies the leadership class, Huckabee went after it. He criticized Wall Street and K Street. Most importantly, he sensed that conservatives do not believe their own movement is well led. He took on Rush Limbaugh, the Club for Growth and even President Bush. The old guard threw everything they had at him, and their diminished power is now exposed.

I believe he’s on to something. The folks who attended the Iowa GOP caucuses Thursday night certainly thought he was on to something.

If you want to win as a Republican these days, you have to approach things a lot differently from the way George W. Bush and Mark Sanford (as pure an example of a "Club for Growth" guy as you’re likely to find) have. And, unfortunately for Mitt Romney, being a "Suit" doesn’t cut it any more. (Thinking a person would be good at politics because he’s good at business is about like assuming that a good swimmer would automatically be a good tennis player — it MIGHT happen, but one does not really lead to the other.)

This New Wave going to be very interesting to watch, and it might be very good for the country.

In New Hampshire, we’ll get our next indicator as to the direction in which that wave is rolling. Will Huckabee’s crushing Iowa victory over Romney boost him to an unexpected victory — or will it push John McCain over the top?

Sacrifice and religion: More Sorensen video

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Following up today on stuff I didn’t have time to deal with adequately before Christmas, what with Mike being off and me doing the pages in his absence…

One ball I dropped was to follow through on my promise to deliver more video from my interview with Ted Sorensen on Dec. 20. Here’s a link to the much-better-than-mine video that Andrew Haworth of thestate.com posted that very night, covering the first part of the interview.

And here, from my dinky, low-res camera, are a couple of quick clips on other parts of the interview I found highly interesting. They are…

First, a clip covering the subject of my recent column challenging candidates today to challenge us the way JFK did. Since that was triggered by a JFK speech I had recently heard again, I thought it particularly apropos to talk with his speechwriter about the subject (The setup — my question — takes a while, but Mr. Sorensen’s reply is worth waiting through that to hear):

Second, we have Mr. Sorensen on the subject of another pair of speeches, both on religion and politics — Kennedy’s to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on Sept. 12, 1960, and Mitt Romney’s to a sympathetic crowd at the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library on Dec. 6, 2007:

Viewing that second clip myself today as I edited it, I realize that much of what was said was said by me (pretty much what I had said already on the blog). But Mr. Sorensen adds some nuggets of perspective that no one else could contribute, so I thought it worth putting this up anyway. Normally when I edit video, I cut myself out as much as possible — why bore my readers/viewers? This time, I didn’t see a good way to do that and keep the context. So, sorry about that.

Single-payer position should be no surprise

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I continue to hear from folks who are:

a) pleased by my advocacy of a single-payer national health plan;
b) surprised by it.

This intrigues me, but I should know that it arises from the same in-the-rut thinking that I’m always ranting against here. Apparently, my position just doesn’t fit into the convenient left-vs.-right dichotomy that most folks have, unfortunately accepted as reflecting reality.

Most of the expressions of both a) and b) come from folks of the self-described "liberal" persuasion. I think this is because they have decided recently to divide the world into two portions — those who demand that our troops get out of Iraq by last year, and everybody else. Since I am definitely in the "everybody else" category, they are befuddled at my health-care position. But… he’s a warmonger, so how…?

If only they would try harder to grok the UnParty. I clearly stated my single-payer position in my very first UnParty column, the manifesto itself. Of course, the UnParty doesn’t demand adherence to that or any other fixed position. The most fundamental, non-negotiable tenet is"

First, unwavering opposition to fundamental, nonnegotiable tenets.
Within our party would be many ideas, and in each situation we would
sift through them to find the smartest possible approach to the
challenge at hand. Another day, a completely different approach might be best.

But I gave a list of particular positions that I, personally, would bring to the mix as an UnPartisan. Here are items 2 and 3:

  • Belief in just war theory, and in America’s obligation to use its strength for good. (Sort of like the Democrats before Vietnam.)
  • A single-payer national health care system — for the sake of business and
    the workers. If liberals and conservatives could stop driving a wedge
    between labor and capital for about five minutes, we could make this a
    reality.

So — no surprises here.

My handy, all-purpose endorsement of everybody (almost)

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    Yes, dear readers, you’ve read this one before — probably. I cannibalized a blog post to construct this column — almost word for word. You’ll probably see me doing that more than once before the holidays are over. That’s partly because I’ll be doing double- and triple-duty with folks out of the office. But it’s also in keeping with what I intended when I started this blog; I had always meant to use it as a lab for developing column ideas. I just usually forget to do that.

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
SINCE MY COLUMN advocating a “single-payer” national health plan ran in this space last week, I’ve received a good bit of feedback along these lines:

Dear Mr. Warthen,
    I think your article is right on target and has a very good insight of the realities of the inefficient American health system. However, it is my feeling that by mentioning that [Dennis] Kucinich is the only one talking about single payer, and in the same line that he is not viable and has seen a UFO you are delegitimizing him…. If you think that this country needs a health care reform, why not throw your support to Kucinich…?

Regards, Kethrin Johnson

    Then, my regular blog correspondent Doug Ross wrote:

    Again, I’ll ask you to put your proverbial money where your mouth is. If you think this is an important issue, don’t endorse candidates who don’t support single payer….

    I get this sort of thing a lot, and I think it’s worth pausing to address. Doug was literally right — I think a national health plan is “an important issue.” It’s not the important issue. If there were anything that I would designate as the important issue in a presidential race, it probably wouldn’t be a domestic one. And I’d rather not judge on the basis of any single issue in foreign affairs either, if I can avoid it. (We found ourselves unable to avoid it in 2004, which made for a most distasteful endorsement.)
    Health care is very important; so are other things. If I chose on the basis of one issue only, I would have to endorse everybody at least once. Just off the top of my head, it might go like this:

Health care — Dennis Kucinich in a walk.
Iraq (as a military operation) —John McCain, the only guy who stood up for the “surge,” which was based on the idea that he alone had been pushing for four years, which was that Donald Rumsfeld refused to send enough troops to get the job done.
Iraq (long-term strategy) — Joe Biden, who (along with erstwhile candidate Sam Brownback), has been pushing the federalist approach of transforming the nation into three semi-autonomous political regions with only a loose Baghdad government uniting them.
Immigration — Either Sen. McCain, who took all the heat on the recent failed comprehensive reform effort, or Hillary Clinton, who refused to demagogue on the driver’s license flap.
Afghanistan — Barack Obama, who had the nerve to say he’d go after the Taliban in Pakistan if necessary.
Pakistan — Sen. Biden, for articulating the fact that we needed a Pakistan strategy, not a Pervez Musharraf strategy.
Administrative ability — Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney or Bill Richardson, the only governors.
Most likely to be the UnParty nominee — Tough call, but I see three most able to lead us out of the vicious partisanship of the past 15 years: Mr. Huckabee, who seems to have governed Arkansas pretty effectively with a Democratic majority in the legislature; Sen. Obama, who has made his desire to be the president of all Americans a centerpiece of his campaign; or Sen. McCain, who, from confirming judges to campaign finance reform to immigration to fighting the use of torture, has demonstrated his willingness and ability to work with Democrats time and again. (See my blog for my UnParty Manifesto.)
Abortion — Either Mr. Huckabee or Sen. McCain. The Democrats walk in the door disqualifying themselves on this one (from my point of view; maybe someday a Democrat like Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania will have a shot), and none of the other leading Republicans can be trusted fully in this area.
Most likely to be the Energy Party nominee — Nobody. Sen. McCain has done some good stuff in the Senate (along with Joe Lieberman, who was my pick for the Democratic nomination four years ago), and I like some of the things Sen. Biden has said about a president’s role in leading on this critical strategic issue. But I don’t think anybody goes far enough. (You can also read about the “Energy Party” on the blog.)
Education — Ron Paul almost gets it by wanting to do away with the U.S. Department of Education; the federal government has no business trying to run our local schools. But then he blows it by wanting to give tax credits to pay people to attend private schools, which is none of the government’s business at any level.

    You get the idea. You may notice that I have no scenarios in which I endorse John Edwards, Rudy Giuliani, Chris Dodd or Fred Thompson. That’s not to dismiss them completely. I suppose if I dug further into all their positions I’d find some single-issue excuse to endorse each.
    But that’s not how we endorse, and that’s not how voters vote (I hope). Since
we can only choose one candidate, practical reality demands that we accept some compromises. The candidate you end up favoring might get just “Bs” and “Cs” on your unique grading scale in most subjects, while someone you reject might be at the top of the class on one issue, but flunk everything else.
    On my own scale, for instance, Mr. Giuliani gets mostly Bs and Cs, with a couple of poor grades on personal deportment. He may not lead the class in anything that comes immediately to mind, but that doesn’t count him out entirely.
    One good thing about primaries is that they force people who might otherwise surrender their thinking to a party to understand that even within a party, there can be great diversity of thought. Such choices compel us to acknowledge the necessity to compromise on some things, unless we’re fooling ourselves. For any thinking voter to find a candidate with whom he agrees on everything would a minor miracle.
    Anyway, back to where we started: Rep. Kucinich gets an A-plus and a gold star on health care in my gradebook. But he flunks national security, which is a required subject.

A bit of perspective on our place in the world, by the numbers

2 Replies

Energy Party consultant Samuel sent me this, which figures. Samuel is the guy who came up with the idea for the endowed chairs program, which bore impressive fruit yet again this week. He’s still the most enthusiastic cheerleader of that program, even after our governor replaced him on the panel that oversees it:

This video — really, sort of a powerpoint presentation, only on YouTube, is worth watching. There are some figures in it that I find suspect (I’m always that way with attempts to quantify the unknowable, which in this case applies to prediction about the future), but others that are essentially beyond reproach, and ought to make us think.

What they ought to make us think is this: So much of what we base the selection of our next president on — party affiliation, ideological purity, our respective preferences on various cultural attitudes — is wildly irrelevant to the challenges of the world in which this person will attempt to be the leader of the planet’s foremost nation. Foremost nation for now, that is. If we don’t start thinking a lot more pragmatically, it won’t be for long.

Here’s my handy-dandy, all-purpose endorsement of EVERYbody (almost)

6 Replies

Since Sunday I’ve received a good bit of feedback along these lines:

Dear Mr. Warthen
    I think your article is right on target and has a very good insight of the realities of the inefficient American health system.
    However, it is my feeling that by mentioning that Kucinich is the only one talking about single payer, and in the same line that he is not viable and has seen a UFO you are delegitimazing him.
So he is not "viable" according to whom? You? The mainstream media? The Democrats?
    If we really want to start a debate about the issues that are important, I think is time to stop supporting candidates in terms of electability, but in terms of what they stand for. Why not vote for our values?
    If you think that this country needs a health care reform, why not throw your support to Kucinich, instead of observing how timid the other candidates are? After all he is the only one walking the talk.
    It’s sad to see the state of democracy in this country.

Regards,
Kethrin Johnson

You’ll note some puzzlement about how candidates get to be "viable," similar to that which I addressed to the Ron Paul folks back in this column.

Then, our regular Doug wrote this in the very first comment on my Sunday column:

Again, I’ll ask you to put your proverbial money where your mouth is.
If you think this is an important issue, don’t endorse candidates who
don’t support single payer.
Your man McCain doesn’t even come close to your thoughts on this issue
– and if I read you column correctly, it is because you think he’s
afraid to address it.

Well, Doug, you just said it — I think this is "an important issue." It’s not THE important issue. If there were anything that I would designate as THE important issue in a presidential race, it wouldn’t be a domestic one. And I’d rather not judge on the basis of any single issue in foreign affairs, if I can avoid it. (We found ourselves unable to avoid it in 2004, which means we made probably the most distasteful endorsement I can recall having made in a presidential race.)

Yes, health care is important. So are other things. If I were to vote on one issue only, I would have many different endorsements. Just off the top of my head, it would probably go like this. If the issue is:

Anyway, I think you get the idea. You may notice that I didn’t have any scenarios in which I endorsed John Edwards or Fred Thompson. I’m sure if I spent an hour or so perusing all their positions I’d find some reason to endorse each of them. I just did the things that came to mind first.

Can anyone (any viable candidate, that is) say ‘single-payer?’: Column version

46 Replies

By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
CAN ANYONE among those with a chance of becoming president say “single-payer?” If not, forget about serious reform of the way we pay for health care.
    It doesn’t even necessarily have to be “single-payer.” Any other words will do, as long as the plan they describe is equally bold, practical, understandable, and goes as far in uprooting our current impractical, wasteful and insanely complex “system.”
    And the operative word is “bold.” Why? Because unless we start the conversation there, all we might hope for is that a few more of the one out of seven Americans who don’t have insurance will be in the “system” with the rest of us — if that, after the inevitable watering-down by Congress. And that’s not “reform.” Actual reform would rescue all of us from a “system” that neither American workers nor American employers can afford to keep propping up.
    But the operative word to describe the health care plans put forward by the major, viable candidates is “timid.”
    “Single-payer” is definitely not that — at least, not within an American context. Seen from the perspective of most advanced nations — which accept medical care as just another part of a nation’s infrastructure, like roads and post offices — it’s no big deal.
    Not here, though — not by a long shot. Here, we have too many people preprogrammed to go ballistic at the mention of “single-payer.” That’s because of the identity of that payer.
    It’s… well, it’s the government!
    This column will now take a short break while libertarians run around shrieking until they turn blue and fall over… da-da-dum-dum, hmmm… readers might want to go look at the Sunday comics until we resume… da-dee-da-dahhh… Still screaming, so let’s get another cup of coffee… Ah, that’s good stuff…
    OK, we’re back, and they’re still screaming, but we’ll just have to accept that they’re going to do that, and proceed.
    “Government,” in America, is a word that we use for a free people banding together to do something that we can do far better working together than working separately. Some people don’t accept that fact. They seem to believe that “government” is some scary thing that intrudes on their lives from out there somewhere, like a spaceship full of aliens with ray guns that will turn us all into toads or something.
    Those people are one of the two big reasons why you don’t hear any presidential candidates saying “single-payer” except Dennis Kucinich. You may recall recent reports that Mr. Kucinich had a close encounter with a UFO, and it was a positive experience, so I guess he’s just not scared of the aliens any more.
    But the major candidates are. Or rather, they’re scared of being labeled as extremists. Also, they don’t want to offend the health insurance companies whose reason for being would disappear under “single-payer.”
    Last week, I got a press release from a labor union that complained “that no Republican candidate has a plan to ensure all Americans have access to health care.” That’s true. But the union, which represents blue- and pink-collar workers in health care, was missing the fact that the leading Democrats are little better.
    “Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been engaged in a bitter back-and-forth over whose health plan covers more people,” The Wall Street Journal reported last week. “Former Sen. John Edwards has jumped in, saying his plan is the best of all.”
    But what they’re fighting over are plans that would pull varying numbers of the uninsured into the same overly expensive, wasteful, maddening system of private health insurance that the rest of us are caught in. Conveniently, they say their plans would be paid for by repealing the “Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.”
    Maybe you could pay for a health plan that way — as long as it doesn’t provide real reform.
    Make no mistake: A single-payer national health plan would cost a lot of money, and you would pay for it in new taxes. The good news is that most of us would probably still pay less than we currently pay in premiums.
    According to the Web site of Physicians for a National Health Program, which promotes single-payer, “This is because private insurance bureaucracy and paperwork consume one-third (31 percent) of every health care dollar. Streamlining payment through a single nonprofit payer would save more than $350 billion per year, enough to provide comprehensive, high-quality coverage for all Americans.”
    But when not even touchy-feely liberal Democrats have the guts to say it’s worth paying a new tax to make health care affordable for all, even when that’s the hottest domestic issue among voters (which would not be the case if the insured majority were happy), we’re in trouble.
    Little wonder that Dow Jones’ MarketWatch reported last week that “Those who hope the 2008 presidential election will finally bring about drastic health-care reform may well end up finding it’s a case of politics and business as usual, experts say.” The same article noted that Hillary Clinton has received $1.8 million in contributions from accident and health insurers, followed by Barack Obama with $1.45 million, Mitt Romney with $1.09 million and Rudy Giuliani with $1.08 million.
    That, by the way, is money that you and I and the guy down the street paid for health care that didn’t go to health care.
    Given the odds against substantive reform — betw
een the government haters, the insurance industry and Big Pharma, all of whom have a demonstrated willingness to outlast the rest of us in any protracted political fight — the only way we’re going to see significant change is if a president is elected with a mandate for bold reform. Only a president is elected by the whole nation, so only a president would ever have that kind of juice.
    Unfortunately, as previously noted, none of the viable candidates will say “single-payer.”
    But I will: Single-payer. Single-payer, single-payer! Now, do you have anything better to say?

What ABOUT a McCain-Huckabee ticket?

21 Replies

Mccain07

This piece by David Broder, which we ran on our op-ed page, intrigued me. Broder is of course the dean of national political writers, so when he says here’s a political combo that would work, I tend to take notice. I had meant to call attention to it on the day that it ran, but got busy and forgot.

So, for the sake of y’all’s discussion, here it is now:

Principles Amid the GOP Pack
By David S. Broder
Sunday, December 2, 2007
If the Republican Party really wanted to hold on to the White House in 2009, it’s pretty clear what it would do. It would grit its teeth, swallow its doubts and nominate a ticket of John McCain for president and Mike Huckabee for vice president — and president-in-waiting.
    Those two are far from front-runners. They trail Mitt Romney in Iowa and New Hampshire and lag behind Rudy Giuliani in national surveys of Republican voters. But, in a series of debates, including last week’s CNN-YouTube extravaganza, McCain and Huckabee have been notable for their clarity, character and, yes, simple humanity.
    From everything I have heard on the campaign trail, it’s obvious that they are the pair who have earned the widest respect among the eight Republican candidates themselves. McCain is the eldest and the most honored, not only for what he endured as a Vietnam prisoner of war but as a principled battler for what he considers essential on Iraq and other national security issues.
    Huckabee, who previously was known only to those of us who cover state government and governors, has been the surprise discovery of the campaign season. His combination of religious principle, good humor, tolerance and clear passion on education and health care complements McCain’s muscular foreign policy and aversion to wasteful domestic spending.
    The two of them seem often to be operating on a different — and higher — plane than the quarrelsome Giuliani and Romney, whose mutual contempt is as palpable as it is persuasive.
    Fred Thompson appears perpetually grumpy — a presence hard to imagine inhabiting the Oval Office. The three House members — Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter — are exercising their lungs but running for exercise, happy to be part of the proceedings but with no hope of being nominated.
    What sets McCain and Huckabee apart is most evident in the way they treat the contentious issue of illegal immigration. Both of them have been burned by it — Huckabee in a losing battle with his legislature over tuition breaks for children of illegal immigrants; McCain for his sponsorship of President Bush’s comprehensive immigration reform. Both now acknowledge — as everyone must — that the failure of the federal government to secure the southern border has produced broad public outrage.
    But, unlike the others, who seem to take their rhetorical cues from the rabidly anti-immigrant Tancredo, Huckabee and McCain always remember that those who struggle to reach the United States across the deserts or rivers of the Southwest are human beings drawn here by the promise of better lives for their families.
    After outlining the failed Senate effort to pass a bill that included a temporary guest worker program and a pathway to earned citizenship for the illegal immigrants already living here, McCain said, "What we’ve learned is that the American people want the borders enforced. We must . . . secure the borders first. But then . . . we need to sit down as Americans and recognize these are God’s children as well, and they need some protections under the law and they need some of our love and compassion." That answer was interrupted by applause.
    Huckabee was asked to defend a bill he sponsored that the questioner said "gave illegal aliens a discount for college in Arkansas by allowing them to pay lower in-state tuition rates."
    The former governor corrected him. The bill, he said, "would have allowed those children who had been in our schools their entire school life the opportunity to have the same scholarship that their peers had, who had also gone to high school with them and sat in the same classrooms. . . . It wasn’t about out-of-state tuition."
    Romney was not appeased. He said Huckabee sounded like a Massachusetts liberal, giving the taxpayers’ money to people who are here illegally.
    To which Huckabee replied: "In all due respect, we’re a better country than to punish children for what their parents did. We’re a better country than that." He, too, was applauded.
    I think we are that better country. And I hope the Republicans agree.
    davidbroder@washpost.com

Huckbeas

Why Rusty likes Rudy

8 Replies

Rudy07

Rusty DePass sent in an op-ed submission recently explaining why he’s a Giuliani supporter, and why he thinks Rudy can win. We did not choose it to run in our limited op-ed space, as any such unabashed advocacy piece raises questions of failure to all the other campaigns. But I thought it was interesting, and I may use it as a launching pad for a column (right now, the competitors in my mind for a Sunday column are this, the topic of Rudy’s appeal in S.C.; a piece on single-payer taking off on the meeting we had with advocates earlier this week; and something on the Romney-as-JFK speech today).

In the meantime, I share it with you for your edification (and yes, if any key supporters for other candidates have pieces that I find equally interesting, I’m open to posting them here). Those of you who know Mr. DePass will agree with me that this is classic Rusty:

     Why Rudy?

The core support for Rudy Giuliani is truly amazing.  It may be hard for some to believe, but I am convinced this guy is for real!  I think 2008 promises to be a genuinely unique election year, and Giuliani might just pull this thing off, even in South Carolina.

Most of us, of course, particularly in South Carolina, never gave a damn about NewDepassr_2
Yorkers, but somehow the attacks of September 11, 2001, made those people Americans again—even the ones who weren’t Americans—and the attack on this country was, and still is, unthinkable.  Giuliani’s leadership in its aftermath, as we all know and observed, was stellar. 

New York City, of course, is the ungovernable city, and for eight years Giuliani ran it—not perfectly, but well, the way it had never been run before—and in many ways turned it around after decades of gross mismanagement. Frederick Siegel’s The Prince of the City is a critical but generally favorable assessment of Giuliani’s effort in getting a handle on how to govern a very difficult city. I recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about this incredible man.

When I decided to support Giuliani, I had to confess that I disagree with the guy on a number of issues, and they are important, though mainly social.  But when I first became interested in politics, there wasn’t any such thing as “social issues.” Abortion was wrong and homosexuals weren’t trying to marry each other then.  The issues were government efficiency, economics, excessive taxation, a strong defense, and governmental interference in our lives and businesses. 

Our society has deteriorated a lot since then and unfortunately social issues have become the stock and trade of conservative candidates’ campaigns.  Outraged citizens demanded it.  I believe in freedom of choice because I believe in freedom, but I don’t believe the government has an obligation to endorse the choices you make.

I have a sneaking suspicion that 2008 is going to be the year when Republicans tire of this fascination with social issues and make their choice on other leadership qualities and policy positions.   I don’t think we’re going to change our beliefs; we’re simply going to change our focus. 

We need to get away from the rigid, moralistic approach to Republican campaigns and get back to basics, and this guy Giuliani has got the basics down.  Not only is he a crime-fighting, Mafia busting prosecutor, he is a superb manager and leader, and on budget and taxation matters, he is as sound as they come.  Moreover, he alone among the candidates for 2008, has a grasp of and commitment to the War on Terror.  He knows why we are in it and why we must win it. 

Frankly I’m a little weary of this “family values” thing.  I’m not opposed to what is meant by “family values,” but there’s an “I’m better than you” quality in that approach that makes me uncomfortable.

Just as Jimmy Carter ruined the term “born-again Christian” for me, all the presidents since Reagan have abused “God bless America.”  “Family values” needs a rest, too.

When you look at abortion, we really haven’t done so well.  We can talk about opposing abortion all we want, but the facts are these: A conservative Republican president appointed the Supreme Court justice who wrote the Roe v.Wade opinion and since then we have had three conservative Republican presidents who have been staunchly “pro-life,” and Roe v. Wade is still the law of the land.  So I would aver presidents don’t have a whole lot of influence in this particular matter.  Courts do.

And while we are speaking of courts, Giuliani has said he would appoint Supreme Court justices like Alito, Roberts, Thomas and Scalia.  Friends, he is telling us something.  He’s on our side.   A few more like those and the social issues will take care of themselves. 

It is interesting that all the major Republican candidates but one have been divorced while all the Democrats are happily married the first time—like the Clintons.  Whether your marriage is a sham or the picture perfect relationship, ultimately the issue of presidential leadership ability transcends family situations.  Let’s not forget that Ronald Reagan was divorced and estranged from his children. 

All of the Republican candidates are preferable to any of the Democrats, but we need a candidate who can win.  Again, Giuliani seems to be the best bet.  I sure would hate to watch Rodham and Gomorrah being inaugurated on January 20, 2009, and think to myself, “Well, at least we nominated the most ideologically pure candidate.”

Romney vs. JFK

12 Replies

Romney_religion

    Almost 50 years ago another candidate from Massachusetts explained that he was an American running for President, not a Catholic running for President.  Like him, I am an American running for President.  I do not define my candidacy by my religion.  A person should not be elected because of his faith nor should he be rejected because of his faith.

Mitt Romney said that today, in his much-hyped, high-stakes speech about … well, he said it was about "Faith in America," but of course it was about "Faith in Mitt Romney," and whether that would be a barrier to his election. Even if he hadn’t invited the comparison to the JFK speech, it would certainly be compared — particularly since it was offered under such similar circumstances, and for nearly identical reasons.

I’ve read and watched (well, sort of watched — more like listening while working) both speeches. Having done so, I wonder whether a fair comparison is possible. I find myself much more impressed by the Kennedy speech, but a great deal of that is a matter of style. Kennedy spoke with such unabashed authority and intellectual rigor, but then he led in a time when the alpha male, take-charge style of leadership was accepted and nobody apologized for it. He came across as Yes, I’m smart as hell; isn’t that what you want in a president? There’s also a slight undertone of being righteously ticked off at having to address the matter, combined with complete confidence in the rightness of what he’s saying.

By contrast, Romney’s delivery is blander, more tentative, less threatening, using tones that you might use in speaking to a class of schoolchildren (but then, I so often think today’s politicians sound like they’re speaking to a particularly slow group of third-graders). As he talks about religion, I’m reminded of how Mr. Rogers might have spoken had he been a televangelist. But this (aside from the hair) is not anything particular to Mr. Romney, I think, so much as it is what public life seems to demand today. He seems to be a little more ingratiating in his desire to be liked — again, in the modern mode.

Beyond that, the speeches in substance have much in common. Both express a fundamental belief in the separation of church and state. Both make historical references. But there are a couple of key differences. Romney feels compelled to "witness" in the evangelical manner to his personal belief in Jesus as the son of God and Savior:

    There is one fundamental question about which I often am asked.  What do I believe about Jesus Christ?  I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind. My church’s beliefs about Christ may not all be the same as those of other faiths. Each religion has its own unique doctrines and history. These are not bases for criticism but rather a test of our tolerance. Religious tolerance would be a shallow principle indeed if it were reserved only for faiths with which we agree.

Kennedy in no way felt compelled to air his own faith in such specific terms.

This stands out in the Romney speech in particular in light of his assertion, immediately after he did that, that he doesn’t believe in doing such things: "There are some who would have a presidential
candidate describe and explain his church’s distinctive doctrines. To do
so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the
Constitution." Yes, I know what he’s thinking: He’s thinking of polygamy and other things from Mormon history. But if there is no religious test, why did he have to say what he did about Jesus? Because there was a higher priority for him than asserting the principles that Kennedy set out: Soothing the Christian right. He was explaining that he believes just what they believe; in other words, he was acting as an apologist for the orthodoxy of his faith. And within this political context, that struck me as unseemly.

Then there was the "multicultural" passage, in which he reached out and stroked everybody and told them that their religion was very fine, too:

And in every faith I’ve come to know, there are features I wish were in my own: I love the profound ceremony of the Catholic Mass, the approachability of God in the prayers of the Evangelicals, the tenderness of spirit among the Pentecostals, the confident independence of the Lutherans, the ancient traditions of the Jews, unchanged through the ages, and the commitment to frequent prayer of the Muslims. As I travel across the country and see our towns and cities, I’m always moved by the many houses of worship with their steeples, all pointing to heaven, reminding us of the source of life’s blessings.

Kennedy didn’t bother condescending thus to other people’s faith. As for his own church, he cited it and its teachings quite specifically and not in generic pieties, but he only did so insofar as it affirmed the bright line between its magisterial authority and secular power in America:

I ask you tonight to follow in that tradition, to judge me on the basis
of my record of 14 years in Congress, on my declared stands against an
ambassador to the Vatican, against unconstitutional aid to parochial
schools, and against any boycott of the public schools (which I have
attended myself)— instead of judging me on the basis of these pamphlets
and publications we all have seen that carefully select quotations out
of context from the statements of Catholic church leaders, usually in
other countries, frequently in other centuries, and always omitting, of
course, the statement of the American Bishops in 1948, which strongly
endorsed church-state separation, and which more nearly reflects the
views of almost every American Catholic.

Overall, for what he was trying to do and his political and cultural context, I suppose Romney did all right. But I think Lloyd Bentsen would probably say that he’s no Jack Kennedy.

Here’s the text of the Romney speech as delivered, and here’s the video.

Here’s the text of the Kennedy speech, and here’s that video.

bud’s four-tiered health care system

18 Replies

Just to show that I’m serious in my admiration for people who are able to articulate smart plans from scratch (rather than reacting the way I tend to do), and to further our discussion, I thought I’d give bud’s four-tiered approach to health care coverage, which first appeared as a comment back here. Compare and contrast it with Doug’s informal proposals, and with the single-payer idea I offered as a way of starting this conversation (most formally set out in HR676):

Doug, your point is well taken that funding of our health care
system is extremely complicated. I would suggest for starters a four
tiered system. These tiers would have nothing to do with age (medicare)
or income (medicaid). Instead they would focus on health care urgency
and time.

Tier 1 would be for the funding of major 1-time events. These would
include serious injuries from accidents and crime victims, heart
attacks, strokes and other narrowly defined situations. These could be
100% funded by the federal government. The list of these events would
be short and all hospitals would be required to accept the government
rate for these services.

Tier 2 would be events that are chronic such as cancer treatments,
diabetis and other longer-term illnesses. These events are more
complicated to address and hence there is likely to be some guess work
to define what ailments are included. Hospitals and doctors could
charge whatever they want depending on where they practice. Patients
could choose between the largely government-funded hospitals and those
that are mostly private (perhaps with a voucher approach). This would
allow some market incentives but would still allow everyone access to
decent care.

Tier 3 is for the preventive issues. Everyone could visit a state
clinic for shots, mammograms, colonoscopies and other screening
programs. Individuals would be required to fund a small portion of
visits beyond the basics each year. I don’t think a 100% government
funded program for tier 3 would work because some people would abuse
it. Needy folks might still be unable to afford the basics, even if
highly subsidized, but at least most people would could recieve care
without an emergency room visit.

Tier 4 would be for elective medical treatment. I see no need for
government involvement here. This would include plastic surgery,
vasectomies and liposuction.

I suspect there is a large grey area between tiers 2-4. But tier 1
should be pretty straight-forward. Some sort of blue-ribbon committee,
established by the government in a cabinet-level agency, could be
formed to place medical care into the proper category. The onurous
nature of th insurance companies profit motive would be greatly reduced
by this system.

Finding common ground on health care reform

12 Replies

The dialogue on this post about single-payer started out in the predictable manner — with libertarian Doug decrying the very idea that I would want him (which is the way he reads the words "we" and "us") to be a part of what I see as the common-sense sense solution to a critical need we have in common as a society.

But you have to read past that. One of the problems Doug and I have discussing issues is that he likes the "how" of specific proposals, whereas my interest lies more in the broad concept. As an INTP, I intuitively understand his frustration, but that’s the way I approach things.

And once you do get to proposals, the ideology falls away enough for Doug to say things that I agree with. For instance, he set forth these five suggestions for taming the health-care-cost monster in America:

1) Reduce drug patent lengths to allow competition from generic makers

2) Require insurance companies to offer coverage that is portable, not revokable under any circumstance, and restricted in the percentage increases in premiums to a limited range across all policies

3) Abolish HIPAA rules that only add expensive overhead costs to the system

4) If healthcare for all is a national concern, pay for it by cutting government costs in other areas rather than simply adding another tax on top of the waste already built into the government. The money is there already to easily cover every one who doesn’t have insurance.

5) Go back to the days where drug companies could not advertise on TV, radio, or print media. All that marketing cost gets passed onto consumers. I really don’t care if I ever see another commercial for Viagra, Ambien, or any other product that has "oily discharge" as a frequent side effect.

With the exception of item No. 4, which is simply a libertarian article of faith (which is why I initially read right over it), this seems like a list I could go for. (As much as I’d like to have a clean sweep,that one is just a spoiler condition. While you or I or anyone can come up with a list of federal expenditures that we could do without, that’s not how representative democracy works — such decisions are made collaboratively, and one person’s waste is another person’s essential. This fact lies at the root of so much libertarian alienation. Anyway, the bottom line is that in the real world, if you say you’ll only agree to a national health plan if you cut an equivalent amount elsewhere, you are for practical purposes saying let’s not do it at all. But in the interests of furthering dialogue, let’s set that aside.)

I was a little surprised that Doug went for No. 1 even more wholeheartedly than I would, since it’s about property rights. And I always thought that HIPAA (which I hate) was about privacy (another libertarian priority), and specifically about trying to achieve Item No. 2 by preventing insurance companies from knowing your medical history. But fine. I’m all for it. And I prefer the more direct, regulatory way of approaching No. 2 — if you insist on still having insurance companies.

I was even more pleased and surprised when Doug, later in the dialogue, proposed that we just make the plan that federal employees are on available to everybody. I would have to study this a lot more closely (and those of you who deal intimately with that system, please weigh in), but I have to applaud Doug’s willingness to do something that bold, even if it’s not single-payer.

Of course, he threw in the caveat that we could cover the cost by cutting spending elsewhere — once again, a fine idea until you try to do it, and something that can’t be an absolute condition if we want to get anything done.

But the really cool thing is that, when we get down to such specifics, we’re no longer arguing about the need for universal coverage. We’re just haggling over the price.