[lbo-talk] The Bush Re-Election Juggernaut

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Thu Nov 27 18:40:51 PST 2003


On Wed, 26 Nov 2003, Nathan Newman wrote:


> I've been taking the somewhat unpopular position among leftists that
> passage of the bill is good, both on policy and politics.

You make good arguments. Of course, if you're right, the fact that almost all Reps and Dems believe the opposite, and the latter are moaning and gnashing their teeth about being rolled is a big plus. The best way to fake sincerity is to actually be sincere. If Dems talked out loud like you do now, they'd lose a lot of the benefits later. Chowderheadedness has its privileges.


> As for the "privatization" aspects, I just don't think a few pilot
> projects and such are not as threatening as most critics make out.

Apropos and in support of that view:

URL: http://www.tnr.com/etc.mhtml?pid=999

On the bright side, as today's Wall Street Journal notes, the

demonstration projects that put private insurers in direct competition

with Medicare--perhaps the most controversial provision of the

bill--may never happen. Republicans love to talk about the virtues of

HMOs in the abstract, but they know their constituents hate them. So

Medicare managed care has become a classic NIMBY issue. Already,

prominent Republican senators like Arizona's Jon Kyl, Oregon's Gordon

Smith, and Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter have tried to secure

guarantees that their communities won't be selected for the

experiments.

There's a precedent of sorts for this. During the 1990s, the Clinton

administration--which was interested in testing whether managed care

really could improve Medicare--tried to set up four competitive

bidding tests in Baltimore, Denver, Kansas City, and Phoenix.

Political pressure from Congress and local leaders prevented a single

test from going forward.

Michael



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list