Thursday, March 24, 2005

Market Forces Don't Fix Healthcare Problems

In the last thread, we got on the topic of how "free-market" economic theory does not apply in the realm of public health care. According to AP, "The more than $150 billion spent on health insurance tax benefits does more harm than good, witnesses told a presidential panel studying tax reforms...

Steuerle and Mark Pauly, a health care economics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, argued that tax breaks given to employers and employees for health insurance don't promote the spread of basic health insurance coverage.

Instead, the incentives cause people to buy excessive amounts of insurance to lower their taxes. That means costs increase, causing some employers to drop their health insurance coverage altogether."


As I've said before, I'm not sure if Canadian style-single payer healthcare is the way to go or not. However, like almost all Democrats, I recognize that major reform is needed in this country. I believe the Clintons were on to something before Republicans and the HMO lobby derailed their attempts at reform. Anyway, the New Republic has an extremely good article about why market forces can't be used to solve healthcare problems in this country and an extensive proposal on what to do about it:

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=PbqApXAVf2BffqP9SzcsBG%3D%3D

7 comments:

adam said...

Totally wrong, Daniel. I may support such a policy, but I'm on the liberal side of Democrats, which you shouldn't fail to take note on. I never said no one supports that, just that you shouldn't talk as if that's what all Democrats want and that in the past you tend to talk about Democrats as if they all hold the most liberal positions they can. Totally wrong. Democrats by far take more moderate positions on issues more of the time.

But either way, neither article supports traditional healthcare reform proposals, though they do challenge conservative ideas...

adam said...

Well, on that in particular, Kerry's voting record was liberal. However, the moderate positions he took weren't insignificant. Balanced budget, welfare reform, etc. Those aren't small issues he went against the party on.

Nat-Wu said...

I'm not entirely sure about that. One major difference between the Dems and Repubs is that the Repubs have a large contingent which is out towards the right (the Christian element). I don't think the Dems have any factions or groups that are that large and that far from moderate.

Adam, didn't you do some research about the Dems being more moderate overall than the Repubs? I recall reading something about that.

Nat-Wu said...

Perhaps, but of all the voting groups that can be clearly identified, what minority is larger than the Christian Right? I could be wrong, but I doubt the far-left liberals constitute as large a following. They tend to split off. The Greens are technically liberals, and they are a pretty substantial percentage of voters (compared to other small parties, that is).

I have no doubt that there's disagreement within the ranks, but my point was only that they weight the Repubs further to the right. The Christian Right cannot be seen as a centrist bloc, no matter what their internal arguments might be.

adam said...

Depends on what you think is liberal. If you think Hillary Clinton is that liberal, than you must be pretty conservative. And personally I find enviromental protections or gay rights to pretty moderate, given all the research I've done.

It wasn't a study, just something I pointed out. The country divided by party is said to be 1/3 Democrat, 1/3 Republican, 1/3 independent or other. However, the ideological make up is said to be 1/5 liberal, 1/3 conservative, and 45 percent moderate or other. Give the logical belief that most conservatives vote Republcian, then that covers nearly all of their voters. Thus, the Democratic party must be left with a significant number of moderates, given than they are 1/3 the populace, but liberals are only 1/5.

Really, if you just look at the parties and their members from an objective standpoint, I think you can see this pretty easily.

And yes Whitey, you as a moderate Republican have a divergent viewpoint, then the conservative majority does what it wants. :) Counting the successes moderate Republicans have had over the last few years just on one hand you'd have to cut three fingers off me thinks.

adam said...

I'm sure you can find it at polling report somewhere. Personally, I think a lot of "moderates" are really liberals afraid to say so but that's just me.

And yes, of course, most of the moderates are independent voters, but the point was that there are more self-described moderates in the Democratic Party than the Republican Party. I would say just from personal observation, most Democrats say they are moderate and most Republicans say they are conservative, and liberal Democrats and moderate Republicans are considered a special thing.

adam said...

I agree - that's the perception ;)