Frum on the healthcare fight

I've been intentionally avoiding the healthcare debate. For one thing I was on vacation for two weeks and blissfully insulated from news stories about "death panels" and clips of seniors on Medicare angrily denouncing "government-run healthcare." Also, it just makes me plain mad -- and I don't like being mad. Yes, the exploding cost of healthcare and health insurance is a sore subject for my family.

Now that the Obama administration seems to be backing away from a public option (the one thing that would put the fear of God in the insurance industry) there's talk that Congress may simply try to pass a bill that contains only those non-controversial measures almost everyone agrees on. If that happens I'm guessing it would spell the end of any hope for meaningful reform this time around, and it would probably be seen as a defeat for Obama and a victory for conservatives—at least the sort of fearmongering conservatives that dominate the public discourse these days.

One of the dissenters from this newish brand of conservatism is David Frum. Although according to Rush, Beck, etc. he's not a real conservative because he doesn't always agree with them, I think Frum has a better handle on what it's going to take to bring the party of Lincoln, TR and Ronald Reagan back from the political wilderness. He understands that merely being against something is no substitute for a positive agenda. Recently on his New Majority website Frum asked his fellow Republicans the question: "What if we win the healthcare fight?" Here's his answer:

For some, the answer is obvious: beat back the president’s proposals, defeat the House bill, stand back and wait for 1994 to repeat itself.

The problem is that if we do that… we’ll still have the present healthcare system. Meaning that we’ll have (1) flat-lining wages, (2) exploding Medicaid and Medicare costs and thus immense pressure for future tax increases, (3) small businesses and self-employed individuals priced out of the insurance market, and (4) a lot of uninsured or underinsured people imposing costs on hospitals and local governments.

We’ll have entrenched and perpetuated some of the most irrational features of a hugely costly and under-performing system, at the expense of entrepreneurs and risk-takers, exactly the people the Republican party exists to champion.

Not a good outcome.

Even worse will be the way this fight is won: basically by convincing older Americans already covered by a government health program, Medicare, that Obama’s reform plans will reduce their coverage. In other words, we’ll have sent a powerful message to the entire political system to avoid at all hazards any tinkering with Medicare except to make it more generous for the already covered.

If we win, we’ll trumpet the success as a great triumph for liberty and individualism. Really though it will be a triumph for inertia. To the extent that anybody in the conservative world still aspires to any kind of future reform and improvement of America’s ossified government, that should be a very ashy victory indeed.

Well said!