Liberalism Works (or, Why people are better helped by entitlements than market solutions)

Slate has an interesting article discussing the relative merits of different solutions to getting the number of Americans without health insurance insured - namely, expanding entitlements versus tax credits.

"The tax break for employer-provided health insurance—worth about $140 billion per year—is larger than several welfare programs combined. But it doesn't work very well. Three years into an economic expansion, the number of uninsured is rising—at 45 million and counting. President Bush and Congress are pushing a host of new tax credits and tax-favored savings vehicles as a means of reducing the rolls of the uninsured.

The simplest solution—having the government expand coverage of the poor not covered by Medicaid, who make up the bulk of the uninsured—is generally ruled out for ideological and fiscal reasons. Such a free-lunch solution may actually be the most effective way to attack the health-insurance crisis. At least that's what Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Jonathan Gruber concludes in a recent paper. Gruber is no Ira Magaziner. A former deputy assistant secretary at treasury in the Clinton administration, Gruber is not a proponent of universal coverage and believes that Medicaid is too generous. But he does believe we can do better."

The articles continues on analyzing the proposals and comes to the conclusion that expanding Medicaid would insure more Americans at less of a cost than tax credits aimed at employees to provide health insurance. Now, this is just one study (though hardly one with unique findings), but let's suppose this is fact. As the article states, expanding entitlements, especially ones tailored to a certain group of people, are generally opposed for ideological reasons by conservatives. However, the other side, provided they do actually care about the poor and uninsured (I'm not generalizing here, but some don't), has to bolster their argument by arguing their method is more effective. But if this proves true, all that would be left is ideological opposition. So I ask you this, can only truly make a claim to care about this issue if they put ideology before results?

To me it is simple - be you liberal or conservative - if this is what works to fix these problems, this is what we should be doing.