Sally Pipes writes that citizens should not confuse this week’s so-called "breakthroughs" in Congressional health reform negotiations with anything high-minded or genuinely aimed at discovery of and service to the public good. All that was achieved, she argues, is an agreement to produce "a public plan with a rural accent." Those "blue dogs," she says, didn’t really serve to moderate out the extremes of the plan.
In other words, they didn’t kill the socialized government-plan option; they just made sure that it spends enough money in their districts.She also very astutely notes that promises to reduce Medicare spending in favor of more universal coverage deliberately mislead. Such a shift in funding would, inevitably, result in fewer services to seniors who would, just as inevitably, loudly object, win that fight, and add yet another bill to mounting debt that is already over-burdening American taxpayers.
The notion that people are happy with medicaid is disingenuous--there is all sorts of rationing and denial of services under that program, as Hewitt noted this week.
It's sad that moderation depends on moderate Democrats.
It is even more sad that those moderate Democrats seem to be so unprincipled. They give moderation a bad name.
It seems that if we depend on the Democrats we'll get a second-rate system and if we depend on the Republicans we'll get a catastrophe. Personally, I'd like to have a system that the world would envy, not laugh at. I hope I'm not alone.