I have to admit that I've lost some enthusiasm for the upcoming election, even as the race reaches a climax of sort in the next three weeks. Why?
Open up the Federal plan, without condition, even for those who already have employer healthcare. It's an easy sell.
...
Obama and Goolsbee can still pursue their multi-year dream of establishing National Health Insurance Buying Cooperatives.
Well, I'm resigned to an Obama Presidency (and perhaps even a Clinton one) that will not deliver much more than a boat-load of subsidies for the poor to buy a financial product, health insurance, and maybe an non-nuanced, broadside attack on "the drug companies" of some sort....
Obama and Goolsbee can still pursue their multi-year dream of establishing National Health Insurance Buying Cooperatives.
The GOP will go along with subsidies for the insurance business, I suspect, because they are already convinced, some of them, that bankrupting the Federal Government is the best way for them to reach their goal of welshing on all these 'Big Government' entitlement programs.
BEYOND MANDATES
If we end up with Obama, it's fairly clear that he will never do "mandates". (The GOPers love him, because "mandates", to them, translates into socialization, which it sort-of is, because it is a cross-subsidy inside an insurance risk-pool. It's a sound cross-subsidy, but that will likely get lost in the details of their ideologically-driven onslaught, intentionally or otherwise).
Open up the Federal plan, without condition, even for those who already have employer healthcare, with a cap on premiums of, say, 80% of the quality-adjusted price of "group" insurance). It's an easy sell. How can Senators, including McCain, argue that the plan in which they participate isn't good enough for everyone? (Pay for it by ending -phasing out- the huge tax subsidy for employer healthcare).Otherwise, do some things that will help States move toward universal care, if they have the money and will power to do it.
Last, if the compromise with the GOP is clearly going to be a deal not worth taking then two things, instead. First, fully fund S-CHIP. Second (in two parts), try dropping the eligibility age for medicare to cover some of these folks who have been dumped by their Nanny Corporation. At the same time, use the government to get a market for catastrophic health re-insurance started (if need be, the government can prime the pump by taking the first slice of risk up to $x, maybe, leaving the rest for private insurers). Whatever the case, do NOT get the government into underwriting all catastrophic health insurance (as Goolsbee may have proposed ...).
Obama and Goolsbee can still pursue their multi-year dream of establishing National Health Insurance Buying Cooperatives. (If that doesn't sound like "big government" interference written in big letters for McCain's campaign, what does?). However, here's a wish that they just do that one thing, for those of us who have this as issue #1, ostensibly.
