[lbo-talk] Way to Go, Kruggie

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

Michael Hoover:
> But I think that's the wrong lesson. The Clinton plan
> actually preserved a big role for private insurers;
> the industry attacked it all the same. And the plan's
> complexity, which was largely a result of attempts to
> placate interest groups, made it hard to sell to the
> public. So I would argue that good economics is also
> good politics: reformers will do best with a
> straightforward single-payer plan, which offers
> maximum savings and, unlike the Clinton plan, can
> easily be explained....."

I recall attending a presentation by Dr. Vincente Navarro shortly after he
had served on Clinton's health care reform team (and who is also the house
Marxist at the JHU Bloomberg School of Public Health) who said that the
Clinton's plan was a Byzantine public-private bureaucracy that was worse
than the status quo.  He also believed that the main opposition to a
national health plan comes not from the insurance sector, but from the
business leadership, because discretionary health insurance is one of their
main anti-union and labor-control weapons.  If people did not worry about
losing their health insurance, they would be more belligerent about wages
and working conditions.

Wojtek