If only because of eight years of malign neglect, the nation's agenda has already shifted heavily towards center-left issues — health care, global warming, sustainable budgets (yes, that's ours now). So far, the GOP field's response is to profess loyalty to supposed tenets of conservative faith: Low taxes forever; regulation is always bad; the rich shall inherit the earth. They seem totally unwilling to actually tackle the issues at hand in any realistic way. Heck, at least for argument's sake, I'd love to see a genuinely “conservative” approach to health care that would actually do the job of getting everyone insured. But it's just not their real priority, and so what you end up with is a bunch of free-market happy talk that doesn't actually solve anything. Will people vote for that? I don't see it.
At least in Massachusetts, there just isn't the critical mass of conservative True Believers to enable such sophistry at the policy level. Arnold Schwarzenegger discovered hard-right talk didn't work in California, changed his priorities and methods, turned his numbers around and breezed to re-election. Our own Sen. Bruce Tarr seems to understand that Republicans need to be a real, substantive part of the policy discussion in Massachusetts. If they start running people who understand that in places like MA-05, they just might win some elections. Currently, it seems they'd rather lose elections than lose their religion.
One of Mike’s blogs of the week a while back on LeftAhead was about this very subject. It was a great blog, but I can’t remember the link. In any event, here’s the gist:
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Because HMOs are so selective in who they’ll offer affordable coverage, they’re actually hurting themselves in the long run. Eventually, it’ll become necessary for the government to come along and create a universal system to bail out the insurance industry on the hundreds of millions they won’t allow to have insurance. Subsequently the government will be forced to run the system for various reasons. First, more and more people will opt for the Government’s health care options. Secondly, it’ll be a matter of affordability: If the government’s forced to care for all the most expensive people and then even the moderately expensive people, they’ll want the less expensive people to hop on board too. Ultimately, only the government can adaquately insure everyone because it’s the only situation where the risk can truly be spread.
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I’ll have to dig up that link, I just don’t have the time right now. Alternately, it’s somewhere on LeftAhead.com or Mike’s blog (massmarrier.blogspot.com) if people want to look for it. Obviously, the author states the situation much better than I ever could… given that he’s an expert and all. LOL.
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What makes that a conservative value? When has it ever been espoused as so?
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I mean, isn’t that sort of like a conservative saying “I’d love to see a genuinely “progressive” approach to gun control that would do the job of getting everyone a gun.”?
State regs cost folks billions each year in higher premiums – its just a fact. State regs are also a patchwork quilt – some do somethings, others do other things, some states say 48 hours in hospital care after a baby is born, others say less. Its inefficient and a mess. Yes, it does force insurers to cover many vital elements of care but we should not delude ourselves that it doesn’t price a lot of folks without care out of the market as well and probably leads insurers to offer more restrictive plans for other things. Romney is full of it…running away from his own plan like a yellow dog..but taking a look at the regs states impose on health care wouldn’t be a crazy idea. In other countries with universal care, believe me, they don’t just cover everything.