What Should the President Say Tonight?

This is the question at the National Journal Health Blog. Here is my answer:

Senator John McCain’s health plan would have insured just as many people as Barack Obama aims to insure — and at no additional cost to the Treasury. It would have substantially lowered health care costs and may have increased quality as well. On the demand side, it would have created new incentives for patients to shop for care, based on price and quality. On the supply side, it would have created a national market for insurance. The financing mechanism was more progressive than anything that has been proposed on the Democrat side of the aisle.

Barack Obama should have praised these sensible ideas and promised to work with both parties to enact some or all of them. Instead, he spent several hundred million dollars demagoguing them. In their place, he proposed a Rube Goldberg reform that cannot possibly work. What is now called “Obama Care” will increase costs, probably reduce quality, and (after spending more than $1 trillion) may not even increase access to care. 

So what should Obama say on Wednesday night?

How about, “I was wrong?”

Print