DID YOU FOLLOW THAT?:

Obama took wrong turn on health (Clive Crook, August 16 2009, Financial Times)

He continues to insist, as he has from the beginning, that control of costs is the principal reason for embarking on reform – more important, even, than achieving universal coverage. Once, this seemed to make strategic sense, because the great majority of US citizens have health insurance and are happy with it. To appeal to this majority, Mr Obama argued that health insurance, both public and private, would soon become unaffordable unless healthcare inflation was brought under control.

Fine – until the independent Congressional Budget Office examined the Democrats’ plans and found that they all added substantially to long-term costs. The CBO’s estimates attacked the core of Mr Obama’s case and they especially rattled moderate Democrats. Yet the line from the White House never deviated. This entire exercise, the administration blithely repeated, is about controlling costs. Can anyone be surprised that moderates are having doubts?

It would have been better to accept from the start that the reform would cost a lot and that universal coverage, with particular emphasis on a guarantee of continued coverage for those currently insured, was worth paying for. But the promise not to raise taxes except on the rich foreclosed that approach. Instead, the plans all aim to cover costs with big savings on Medicare, the public programme for the elderly – and many Medicare recipients doubt the assurance that their services will not worsen as a result.

Okay, so the overwhelming majority of Americans already has health insurance with which it is satisfied, but the proper political path is for Mr. Obama to go before the electorate and offer to make health care cost more and require them to pay more, in exchange for which they get to keep what they already have? That sounds more like a threat than a sales pitch.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 17, 2009 8:53 AM