Start Over
Amazon occasionally offers these ridiculously cheap magazine subscriptions, a couple bucks a year, so I happen to get Rolling Stone. And in the current issue Matt Taibbi has an essay on the health care reform process. I read it this afternoon, sitting on the porch — a beautiful afternoon here in Washington — but when I went to find the essay online discovered that Rolling Stone has only made available some related Taibbi videos. Oh well... Now, Taibbi often gets things wrong and he tends too much towards hysteria for my tastes, but on health care he makes a lot of terrific, valid points. Most importantly, that the political process is broken.
One wonders whether it's irreparably broken, but on health care I still think that there may be a sliver of hope. And that would be to cut the Republicans out of the debate and start over.
Picking up one of Taibbi's arguments but taking the logic to the next step, it doesn't make sense that any health legislation should have over 1,000 pages. What's obviously going on is a set of complicated giveaways to corporations when what's needed is a simplification of medical services delivery. To accomplish what we want, whether it's single payer or a robust public option, the legislation really needs no more than two or three pages. Simple, unambiguous language that either directs the government to pay all medical bills or that allows individuals to buy into Medicare at a reasonable cost. And there's also a third way to approach the problem that makes sense, which would be to incrementally expand Medicare over the next several years, each year taking in new tranches of the public, starting with older and younger groups and working towards the middle.
It seems to me that the progressive caucus, if determined, could make a stand on the simplicity issue and then bargain over its contents. No bill will pass that is longer than five pages. Period.
At the same time it makes no sense whatsoever, if the Democrats choose to go it alone without Republican votes, to include in any health reform legislation the already agreed compromises with Republicans. That was yesterday; those were old rules.
Health care is a genuine political inflection point. The Democratic party needs to decide what it wants to do with itself, either to endorse meaningful reform or become irrelevant.
Posted by George Kenney on August 23, 2009 2:21 PM 
« A Tale of Two Economies | Main | Armed, Angry Lunatics »
Comments
re: five page bills
I've often blabbed to folks about how, if I were President, I'd veto any bill that I couldn't sit down, read and understand in a couple minutes. But hey, I'm an anarchist.
[I'm told by friends on Capitol Hill that Medicare was about 150 pages... But even if 5 pages would be too brief it's clear that 1,000 pages and over is too much. g.]
Posted by: John K. Fitzpatrick | August 25, 2009 8:24 PM
Taibbi may "often get things wrong" — presumably meaning a views which often differ from one's own. He definitely got one thing right: Goldman Sachs. And he had the cojones to say so — something which too many mealy-mouthed, dough-headed and sycophantic journalists did not.
[I'm thinking in particular of the scorn he's heaped on 9/11 skeptics. g.]
Posted by: Sam | September 4, 2009 12:54 AM
Re: "I'm thinking in particular of the scorn he's heaped on 9/11 skeptics."
On that, I'm with you 100% — as I am with Paul Craig Roberts.
Posted by: Sam | September 24, 2009 5:29 AM