Better Health Care
Yuval Levin has an interesting piece up over at The Weekly Standard (via Real Clear Politics). It looks at what appears to be a fairly solid consensus among Republican candidates to fix some of the real concerns people have about health care in this country – without going to full-scale socialized medicine, which is frankly where HillaryCare would lead.
An aggressive approach would seem to make political sense. Americans are clearly concerned about the cost of health care–often listing it just behind the war in Iraq among their worries–as well as the instability of coverage and the plight of the uninsured. But when pollsters begin to dig into these worries, what they turn up is not quite what the Democrats are hoping.
To begin with, those Americans who are insured–which, of course, includes the vast majority of voters–are very happy with their coverage and care. Almost 90 percent of them rated their coverage good or excellent in last year's Kaiser Foundation poll on health care, the highest rating in the two decades Kaiser has been polling. In the same poll, 93 percent were happy with their quality of care, 86 percent with their ability to get a doctor's appointment when they want to, and 77 percent with their ability to get non-emergency care without having to wait. A surprisingly high 64 percent even said they were satisfied with their health care costs. These are not voters clamoring for radical change in their health care.
Americans are also not eager to see a more intrusive federal role in health insurance. In early September, Senate Republicans were briefed on the results of recent polling of women and swing voters in key 2008 states which showed that "government-run health care" was a very powerful turn-off for these crucial constituencies. More recent surveys turn up the same result: Voters are anxious about health care, but the prospect of a new bureaucracy to manage their care worries them,
Those poll numbers indicate a serious overreach on the part of the left – again. That gives Republicans a serious weapon for the upcoming elections. The three-pronged approach that seems to be emerging as the consensus, then is straightforward:
The approach consists of three parts: reform of the way health insurance is taxed, more control for consumers in how health care dollars are spent, and more flexibility for states to use Medicaid funds to help the uninsured. Each of these pieces is larger than it seems.
Allowing a tax credit system for health care would let voters decide where they want to put their health care dollars – and make policies portable, which is really one of the major complaints with the current system. That in turn would give people control over what they want from their coverage. The resulting competition for those dollars should lead to attractively priced insurance packages as insurance companies vie for customers. The third piece is a bit more problematic, because states tend to go crazy when they have Federal dollars to throw around. But even that can be handled. Go read Levin's analysis. It is quite clearly spelled out. The polling indicate that people do not want socialized medicine – despite the hyperventilation from the left. This approach could be a serious blow to their perennial overreach.
By Huatou, September 25, 2007 @ 12:40 am
It seems to me that the place to begin a health care reform would be to set limits on malpractice liability — you know, back to the “eye for and eye…” model — compensation for the damage, but not for “mental anguish” or all the other malarkey that lawyers inject into claims. I don’t know what my son-in-law pays for malpractice insurance, but I bet it’s a LOT, and such necessities drive up costs all around.