Legal Commentary

Leave The Gun, Take The Cannoli (Leave The Mandates, Take The Subsidies)

By Big Tent Democrat

Ezra's latest is much better:

How you'll judge Max Baucus's framework depends on how you understand the goal of health-care reform. . . . It really would insure tens of millions of people. . . . It really will expand Medicaid and transform it from a mish-mash of state regulation into a dependable benefit. . . . The main disappointment is that insofar as you see the bill as a vehicle for moving us towards a better, more efficient, less costly system, there are some problems. In particular, this bill seems to block off . . . possible points of expansion. . . . [T]he co-op plan is an interesting policy proposal, but unlike a public insurance option, it's difficult to imagine it growing into anything significantly stronger than what's outlined in the paper.

To follow Ezra's point, if this is where health care legislation is heading, it is no longer reform, but merely providing relief to the poorest among us. And that is an absolute good. That is the cannolis. Let's take that. But let's leave the "reform" (the mandates and the co-ops), or the gun.

If we are giving up on positive incremental structural reform, and to me that means a public option, then let's leave reform out altogether. Let's take the money for Medicaid and other coverage expanding programs, and leave out the mandates. And that makes a reconciliation bill quite doable. Then, maybe, we can do health care reform right later.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on September 08, 2009 (boomark / email).