The "evolution" approach to health care reform, negatives please

[steve2470]

Hi everyone. I'm not much of a debater but I love coming here to get informed and stimulated.

Please tell me the negative points of Democrats adopting a "centrist" plan now (as outlined by Obama last night) and then over the years tweaking it to become more progressive.

Yes, I'd love to have the entire banquet (single payer) also. Unfortunately, from what I read, the only way to get the entire banquet would be to ram it through Congress with no Republicans aboard with that obscure parliamentary provision.

Please, your comments.

[fasttense]

1. Because legislation DOES NOT always get better with time.

Frequently it gets worse.

[mmonk]

2. There is no evolution. This is mandated for profit private insurance

with consumer protections. If anything, this is a total corporate takeover with tax payer subsidies for the poor.

[iamjoy]

3. An Incremental Approach Is Great

Unless of course you are the person without health insurance today
Unless of course you are the person fighting with the insurance company to get your chemotherapy covered today.
Unless of course you are the person trying to get a mortgage to pay for that life saving surgery today.

With this incremental approach, to whom would we deny care? Who would we sacrifice to the greater good, the long term goal?

One could also argue we've had an incremental approach for 60 years or so, and that is part of the problem. It has led to a patchwork of regulations. First, we rejected single payer, but implemented laws that facilitated the employer-based system. Then, we plugged a gap and created Medicare and Medicaid. We plugged another hole with COBRA. After Clinton's ambitious reform failed, we went for a less comprehensive approach with SCHIP and HIPAA. Meanwhile, states are implementing their own regulations - making things more complicated and adding administrative costs to employers.

[JHB]

4. That would depend on the nature of the final "centrist" plan...

...and whether it's "tweakable" and the likelihood of getting those tweaks implemented.

The main factor in getting it mostly done in one push is that the entrenched interests will ALWAYS push back, and with the influence that the current system allows them to buy (not to mince words about it) it takes a focused push to get any movement in the other direction.



I do thank you for using quotes around "centrist", because in current political parlance the word has very little to do with the actual political spectrum (except perhaps that inside the Beltway) and is mostly a rhetorical tool used to obliquely paint anyone with differing views as radicals or simply unreasonable.