Sure, labor creates all wealth. My point is that this is political poison. Once again, by going for the politically expedient thing, the Democrats (not by mistake) are making themselves vulnerable to the attack that big government wants to force you... in this case to buy insurance. Every uninsured person out there is probably thinking, like me, what the hell? As with the original Clinton plan, it won't get the public support it'll need in order to tame the insurance companies and therefore NOTHING WILL HAPPEN.
Jordan wrote earlier:
>>If you're going to have a big insurance system, you sure better make it so >>that everyone has to have it.
and I wrote:
>Funny how that's not been a problem with Medicare.
Although no-one need be coerced into Medicare (because it's paid for with taxes) I was wrong that this hasn't been a problem for Medicare. Looked at in a larger view, it's exactly the problem with Medicare--not everyone is in it.
Mike Ballard wrote:
>>As the liberal Krugman says, he'd rather see a single payer system;
>>but as he doesn't think that the majority of workers will vote for such a
>>system yet (the level of 'informed' political ignorance is so high)
>JB:
>Really? Does he say that? Polls say exactly the opposite, that the public is
>for it.
>Krugman wrote: Now, if I had my way I'd just go to single-payer, Medicare for >All. But that's politically impossible, at least for now.
Yeah, I read that column. But "politically impossible" is not equal to "the majority of workers will [not] vote for such a system." As you know, we have a bit of a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie goin' on over here, which is why any talk of eliminating insurance companies is kept out of the running. And it's why a majority of workers don't vote, period.
MB:
>So, now you've got two people
>in your bourgeois democratic setup who are offering their versions of what
>MIGHT or might not be the resulting Congressional legislation AFTER one of them
>takes the helm of the executive committee of the ruling class. I think Krugman
>probably has a good grasp of which one of those candidates' proposed programs
>for health care reform will have the greatest chance of sliding toward 'single
>payer'.
The theory there is that if you create a cheaper, better public system it will undercut private insurance and they'll have to cut prices or fold. But to make this work you have to regulate the private market. When Medicare opened up to private knock-offs they simply took people's money and then failed to provide the promised service. This is even after they skimmed the cream--finding the healthiest people, signing people up in meetings held on second floors accessible only by stairs, you know, the genius of capitalism and all that.
Neither plan has a chance in hell of passing unless people like Krugman, who actually have some ability to get heard, create the outside threat of worse for the insurance companies. The history of incrementalism on healthcare in the US is that each small advance releases pressure rather than creating more pressure. Medicare is a good example of such a compromise. The Medicare drug benefit is another case of a compromise that removed pressure, partly by undercutting the idea that the government can do anything right.
Jenny Brown