[lbo-talk] TNR: universal health care now! or how to work for Wal-Mart

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Fri Mar 17 07:23:28 PST 2006


Nathan Newman wrote:


>Or maybe they promote an unobtainable "leftwing" position precisely to blunt
>the quite obtainable "fair share" bills moving through state legislatures
>across the country, which would tax businesses to pay for health care,
>rather than dumping the costs on the already burdened public till-- with no
>new tax revenues to pay for it. A bunch of "centrist" Dem organizations,
>like the New America Foundation, coincidentally suddenly discovered a fervor
>for universal health care just as the anti-Wal-Mart health care campaigns
>moved forward. Call me cynical, but I see a typical manipulation of the
>left at work, getting all the lefties and liberal purists to demand the
>unobtainable and get Wal-Mart and other big employers off the hook from the
>fair share legislation being proposed across the country. So I think TNR is
>part of the pro-Wal-Mart propaganda team.
>
>Of course I'm for universal health care. I think the best way to achieve it
>is to mandate all employers provide health care, expand SCHIP programs to
>all children -- a la Illinois' program, and add a health care component to
>unemployment insurance. That would move the country to universal coverage
>and then we would have clear pressure to get rid of the waste in the system
>since no one would have any option to dump their health care costs.

That would still be massively inefficient. Patchwork schemes like this have much higher administrative costs, and are far more complicated for people to deal with, than a simple universal public program.

Your reasoning in the first paragraph is weird and baroque. What seems to be happening is that a lot of liberals - TNR, NAF, Krugman - are really coming around on an issue that used to appeal only to those further left. This could be politically momentous - broadening support for a new public program that has long been a cornerstone of socialist and social democratic politics. For you to read that as a cynical defense of Wal-Mart is itself cynical in Horkheimer's sense of conforming with the status quo while knowing better. The fair share bills repeat the disaster of HillaryCare - complex, wonkish, inadequate, and unlikely to inspire a mass movement. TNR was honest enough to admit they were wrong. At a moment when something like that is happening, you dismiss it as cynical and manipulative. Nathan, you really need to pause a minute and reflect on what's happening not only to your politics, but your mind. You're too smart and talented to write nonsense like this.

Doug



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