Charley at Blue Mass points to Robert Kuttner’s reflections on the recent Massachusetts health care leglislation. I’d second his ambivalent optimism… or maybe Kuttner’s ambivalent pessimism. Some more people are going to be covered under this safety-net-plus-insurance-mandates plan, and it’s worth it for that, but it’s also a half-measure that doesn’t do much to fix an inefficient, expensive system. As Tyler Cowen puts it,
This kind of approach will prove increasingly popular. You claim to cover everybody. It doesn’t sound very socialistic and most of the costs are hidden. It appeals to voters’ sense of justice; there is a general belief that many individuals and businesses are free-riding upon the ready availability of hospital emergency rooms. It keeps private insurance rather than trying to eliminate it (single-payer plans) or eliminate its tax advantages (HSAs).
Actually, all of Tyler’s post is a must-read for those interested in how Massachusetts will impact the national health care debate. As someone who wants to see public health care provision in this country, it saddens me to think that Tyler is probably right that this compromise will likely take a lot of the wind out of the sails of single payer and socialized provision plans in the Democratic party. Then again, if Massachusetts didn’t invent this half measure, someone else was likely to, so I’m not sure anyone here is to blame for the source of rhetorical obstacles to comprehensive national health care reform.
A question I have: to what extent will the direction of our health system take be driven at the national, not state, level? Will patchwork regulation and insurance funding grow more popular absent a national consensus?
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