> 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