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Yeahbutwhat?

Was just reading Paul Krugman’s Friday column. I couldn’t bear to stick with the health care summit for it’s entire epochal length, so I missed the dialogue below when it was spoken by Lamar Alexander. Here’s Krugman:

What really struck me about the meeting, however, was the inability of Republicans to explain how they propose dealing with the issue that, rightly, is at the emotional center of much health care debate: the plight of Americans who suffer from pre-existing medical conditions… But what’s the Republican answer? Mr. Alexander was strangely inarticulate on the matter, saying only that “House Republicans have some ideas about how my friend in Tullahoma can continue to afford insurance for his wife who has had breast cancer.” He offered no clue about what those ideas might be.

I had remembered an Obama-Alexander exchange on premiums where Alexander said, “Costs will go up under your plan,” the president said, “prove it,” and Alexander said, “Let me get back to you on that,” so I thought, “He really didn’t do that twice, did he? And everyone missed it?” But yeah, he did. Here he is in the midst of listing “our step-by-step plan for reducing health care costs.” Access for people with preexisting conditions is the sixth out of six items:

Number six, House Republicans have some ideas about how my friend in Tullahoma can continue to afford insurance for his wife who has had breast cancer. Because she has a preexisting condition, it makes it more difficult to buy insurance. So there’s six ideas.

This reminds me a bit of Nixon campaigning on his secret plan to end the Vietnam war, or Senator Joe McCarthy’s list of 29, um, that is 32, no 21.7, er, that is 256, I mean 12 Communists in the State Department that he never did show anyone because it didn’t exist. House Republicans have “some ideas.” Well, great. I’ve got some ideas about flying cars, perpetual energy devices, and a way to teach cats calculus. They are far too complex and creative for me to share them with you, but trust me, I HAVE them!

This entry was posted on Friday, February 26th, 2010 at 8:16 pm and is filed under The Political Mindscape. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Yeahbutwhat?”

David in Cal Says:
February 27th, 2010 at 2:30 pm
I’m an expert in insurance. There are lots of problems with today’s health care and health insurance systems. However, the current proposals will make the problems even worse. The President and Congress don’t know how to cut costs and increase efficiency. If they did, they would have used that knowledge to improve Medicare.

When Medicare was begun, its actual cost turned out to be about seven times as high as the government actuaries had predicted! I don’t expect that magnitude of difference, but I am confident that the proposed health reform plan will cost a great deal more than its proponents claim it will.

BTW people who need care they can’t afford can get care via Medicaid. The government already pays for medical care for poor people. In practice, it’s my understanding that Medicaid patients get rather mediocre care. However, there’s no reason to expect any new system to provide better care than Medicaid does — especially as badly designed a system as is being proposed.

Yeahbutwhat?

One Response to “Yeahbutwhat?”

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