An Essay Worth Reading
Our Great and Eternal National Health Care Debate calls to mind H.L. Mencken’s description of the prose stylings of Warren G. Harding, America’s much-maligned 29th president: “It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash…But I grow lyrical.” (More from Bob Graboyes)
So well-said!
“Crowds at anti-AffordableCar think tanks applaud politely, with audience members drifting gradually into slumber throughout the speech — or toward the refreshment table.”
Wow
Coherent vision, incoherent tools: Like AffordableCar, the Affordable Care Act is an unworkable vision, but a vision nevertheless, brimming with applause lines: insurance for those with pre-existing conditions, 25-year-old children on parents’ plans, no dropping cancer victims’ coverage, women paying the same as men, more people with coverage. Unfortunately, vision alone can’t overcome the law’s conflicting incentives, unintended consequences and logistical overreach.
They need some sort of plan besides an idea.
Someone should have told them that, then maybe health care wouldn’t be in the state that it is in.
This is a great essay on comparing the logistics of health care reform. I agree that a large part of health care problems is the lack of innovation.
Innovation creates efficiencies, which is why ACA is so inefficient. It could possibly work, but not with the state that health care is in right now.
“Buy insurance across state lines. (This is as practical and beneficial as buying haircuts across state lines.)”
Maybe we just really want that barber in the next state over.
It does seem like providing the ability to buy insurance across state lines is just a knee jerk to giving the individual more choice.
Maybe we need regulations allowing “tele-barbering”?
(That’s just a Friday morning joke, in case anyone’s thinking too hard about that one.)
“But it requires ACA opponents to play offense, rather than continue the feeble defensive game”
Very well said. Less criticism and more ideas for a real, workable solution.