{"id":3245,"date":"2009-09-08T10:35:51","date_gmt":"2009-09-08T14:35:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/?p=3245"},"modified":"2009-09-08T10:35:51","modified_gmt":"2009-09-08T14:35:51","slug":"the-core-of-the-gop-health-care-approach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/2009\/09\/08\/the-core-of-the-gop-health-care-approach\/","title":{"rendered":"The Core of the GOP Health Care Approach"},"content":{"rendered":"

Josh Marshall has a short, but insightful, piece<\/a> up that gets to the core of the GOP’s approach to health care:<\/p>\n

Piece through the rhetoric [of this opinion column<\/a> by Reps. Shadegg and Hoekstra (R) in the Wall Street Journal<\/em>] and the essential message is true to what the Republican leadership believes about health care and health insurance policy.<\/p>\n

In short, the problem isn’t that your insurance costs too much or that you might lose it or anything like that. The problem is that you have insurance, especially insurance through your employer. Ideally you wouldn’t have insurance at all or at least you’d have much less of it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That can’t possibly be true, right?\u00c2\u00a0 Just a bit of partisan rhetorical excess, surely.\u00c2\u00a0 But it squares pretty well with what I’ve heard from “conservatives” (at least the ones that aren’t busy bleating about socialism and indoctrination).\u00c2\u00a0 Consider Marshall’s example:<\/p>\n

The problem is that you go to the doctor and agree to take the tests the doctor recommends. Shadegg and Hoekstra want a system where if your doctor suggests a biopsy for a suspicious lump you think about the pros and cons. Is it worth the money? Do you have the money? How suspicious is the lump anyway?<\/p>\n

[ . . . ]<\/p>\n

This is the essence of the Republican plan: the fact that you’re insured and aren’t directly feeling the cost of individual tests and procedures is the problem and getting rid of the insurance concept is the solution.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Marshall then boils it down:<\/p>\n

To be clear, such an approach probably would cut costs because most people just couldn’t afford to get a lot of care, which is a great way of cutting costs. But remember, the problem according to most Republicans in Congress isn’t that there’s not enough insurance or that it’s not good enough. It’s that there’s too much. The problem is that you have insurance. And good policy will take it away from you.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think that’s a pretty fair description.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, I may draw an objection, where someone claims that free-market fairy dust will be spread across the industry, and that this will create competition that brings down prices.\u00c2\u00a0 But that’s a fantasy (along the same failed lines as HSAs).\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 The medical services industry isn’t in the business of competition, and individuals don’t approach their health care needs as they do commodities.\u00c2\u00a0 Health care is an essential service, and doesn’t really work all that well with imaginary free market parlor tricks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Josh Marshall has a short, but insightful, piece up that gets to the core of the GOP’s approach to health care: Piece through the rhetoric [of this opinion column by Reps. Shadegg and Hoekstra (R) in the Wall Street Journal] and the essential message is true to what the Republican leadership believes about health care […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-policy","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3245"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3247,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3245\/revisions\/3247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}