Matt Yglesias

Conservative Alternative to Rationing: You Get Nothing

The best political weapon opponents of health care reform seem to have is scaring senior citizens about the idea that Democrats are planning to cut their Medicare benefits. This, of course, leads to some ideological dissonance since Medicare is exactly the kind of Canadian-style government-run insurance option (in Canada’ they call their government-run insurance “Medicare”) that conservatives claim will lead inexorably to disaster. So on Monday, RNC Chair Michael Steele is Medicare’s greatest defender but on Tuesday it’s a disaster he wants to see eliminated:

Steele’s a buffoon but his incoherence is perfectly reflective of a larger conservative incoherence. The preferred argument against the government paying for your health care is that in order to control costs the government might start limiting the quantity of care that it’s willing to pay for. This is the dread so-called “rationing.” The obvious solution to the rationing problem, were it to arise, would be to make taxes higher and spend more money. But instead the conservative pseudo-solution to the rationing problem is to have the government pay for nothing at all. You’d get a ration of zero. Instead of the risk of the government coming between you and your doctor, you just won’t be able to afford to see the doctor.

Michael Steele is Definitely Missing Something

I think it’s safe to say that RNC Chairman Michael Steele doesn’t have a great grasp of the health care system. In his guise as guest host of Bill Bennett radio show, Steele repeatedly denounced government involvement in health care and then suggested that an alternative approach to the problems of cost and access is to wave a magic wand and say “do the deal” a lot. Check it out:

STEELE: So if it’s a cost problem, it’s easy: Get the people in a room who have the most and the most direct impact on cost, and do the deal. Do the deal. It’s not that complicated.

If it’s an access question, people don’t have access to health care, then figure out who they are, and give them access! Hello?! Am I missing something here? If my friend Trevor has access to health care, and I don’t, why do I need to overhaul the entire system so I can get access he already has? why don’t you just focus on me and get me access?

In the real world, it’s hard to broaden access without reducing costs and it’s hard to reduce costs without some kind of systemic change. A publicly-run plan, for example, would cut costs and set the stage to broaden access. But that would involve the dread government.

Does the RNC Support Slavery?

The RNC Twitter feed tosses out a little oppo:

as he prepares to deliver remarks in hall that holds the constitution, flashback obama: “constitution flawed” http://bit.ly/tFL7O #RNC

Ha ha! But via Brad DeLong, the context:

Barack Obama, September 6, 2001: A September 6, 2001 program called “Slavery and the Constitution” on WBEZ Chicago…. Obama explained that the “fundamental flaw” [in the Constitution] was [that] “Africans at the time were not considered as part of the polity that was of concern to the framers.” In addition, the framers did not “see…it as a moral problem involving persons of moral worth.” http://apps.wbez.org/blog/?p=639

Another step forward in the Republican Party’s minority outreach efforts, I guess.

Michael Steele’s First 100 Days

Neat video by TP’s Victor Zapanta:

When you’re done with the video, you should read Jonah Goldberg’s plan to save conservatism through tokenism.