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Monday, October 15, 2007
David Broder Doesn't Play By The Rules
David Broder's Sunday column was infuriating. He essentially endorses health care plans that are friendly to business.
But that's not the worst part. He says he endorses them because they're the only way to reduce costs.
Converting to such a system would be controversial. Insurers and some of the players in the health system would probably object. But the growing sense in business that only a mass marketplace of individuals can apply the competitive pressure needed to discipline the forces of medical inflation is moving the country in that direction.
But if the only way to reduce medical inflation is to turn the system into a market, then why do all developed countries rely primarily on the power of government to hold down prices? And why have they been so successful at it?
Then there's this distortion of liberal policy proposals:
The report, bearing the imprint of Alain Enthoven, the eminent Stanford health guru, and Joseph Minarik, the CED's director of research, devotes page after page to discounting a wide variety of what it terms "Band-Aid" approaches. They range from Newt Gingrich's favorite -- the introduction of high-tech computers to medical practices -- to the Bush administration's "consumer-directed health plans with medical savings accounts" to the liberal Democratic solution of "Medicare for all" or single-payer plans.
Let's leave aside an analysis of the problem. What burns me up the most about this column is its basic unfairness. It's not fair to say that market pressures are the only solution. It's not fair to call the liberal alternative "Medicare for all" when the most common liberal proposal is opening up Medicare as a choice for the uninsured.
I think Mr. Broder wants to live in a world where the right and left are wrong, and the center is the only reasonable way forward. But that world is a thing of the past, if it ever truly existed. He now must conjure up a reality to his liking by breaking the rules, i.e. distorting positions and narrowing the available policy options.
You'd think a centrist would play by the rules, but you'd be wrong.
Posted by Matt Lewis
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