Saturday, November 11, 2006

 

Democrats on Probation

The turnover on November 7 gave the Democrats a 51-49 majority in the Senate and a working majority in the House. The pundits say that these majorities could be lost in the next election unless the Democrats show that they provide a better example for the country than the Republicans. Democrats are on probation; if they screw up, they’ll be voted out as decisively as they were just voted in.

Advice to the Democrats is to govern from the center. Don’t do reckless things just to please the Democratic base. Republicans have been pleasing their base for the past ten years and especially since George Bush took office. Some of the results are a law that bans a certain abortion procedure, a law that prevents the Medicare from negotiating drug prices, and some appointments to the federal judiciary. Pleasing the Republican base often meant angering every one else. One result was that Congress left untouched several serious problems: immigration reform, fixing the broken national health system, investigating and exposing the bungling of the war in Iraq, and assuring the future existence of the Social Security program. Our system of government requires consensus, not a mere majority, to get any important law enacted. Clinton showed us that in 1994 when he tried to enact universal health care with a majority of only Democrats.

Governing from the center and getting bipartisan support for important bills in Congress is wise advice. As a President or a member of Congress, you won’t always please your base with such a course, but you will get some things done. It remains to be seen whether Mr. Bush will learn this lesson.

Now that I’ve written this paean to centrist governance, let me write that, as a part of the Democratic “base” I expect to be disappointed with the new Democratic Congress. I regret that there will not be a serious attempt to impeach George W. Bush, even though there are several grounds for impeaching him. There has been a change in the leadership at the Defense Department. I regret that there will be no corresponding change at the State Department. Perhaps the Secretary of State will learn as much or more from the election than her boss, President Bush.

My issue is universal health care. We need a simple, practical, workable system to provide adequate health care to any American who needs it, just as we provide police protection and fire protection to every resident of the city in which I live. We do not have different levels of police and fire protection for persons of different income; a poor man can count on the police just as much as a rich man and the fire department puts out fires without regard to the economic status of the home owner.

I am sorry that universal health care seems to be a partisan issue. It’s an issue championed by Democrats and ignored by Republicans. I don’t know of recent public opinion polls on the issue, but many years ago it seemed that about 60 percent of Americans favored some sort of universal health care system. Many Americans look with favor on the Canadian system of universal single-payer health insurance.

Some Republicans see the system recently enacted in Massachusetts as something they can support. The Massachusetts plan leaves in place the private insurance companies and requires that each resident of the State buy health insurance from one of those firms. Persons who don’t earn enough to pay the premiums receive a subsidy from the State to help pay the premium cost.

I don’t care for the plan myself. Supporters argue that the analogy is car insurance. Everyone who operates an automobile must have liability insurance. I think that is the wrong analogy. A somewhat better one would be to require everyone to have collision insurance; that is, insurance that pays for damage to his own car. My health insurance is to pay for medical care for me, not for someone who may have caught my cold or my flu or my cholera or my diphtheria. Car insurance provides a range of options, mostly deductibles, as well as unpublicized policies of the insurance companies regarding payment to innocent victims of auto accidents.

Health Insurance doesn’t work the same way as car insurance. If you are a victim of an accident with an insured driver, his insurance company may delay payment for many months and may require that you sue the other driver in court and obtain a judgment before it will pay. If you are sick with pneumonia, you shouldn’t have to sue an insurance company to obtain the money to pay for the doctor and the hospital. However, we must be realists. Private insurance companies are in business to make a profit, not to keep people healthy and well-cared for. Private companies will offer a range of policies, with prices to match. Individuals who are required to buy insurance must shop around for the policy and price that they are comfortable with. Many of them will later find that their insurance doesn’t cover the particular illness or condition that has afflicted them.

In spite of these reservations about letting private for-profit firms provide health insurance, I am willing to go along with such a plan if it is the only plan that can find broad bipartisan support. Once such a plan is under way, it may become politically impossible to rescind it. If it turns out as I suspect, the public will insist on providing a single, non-profit agency to provide health insurance for everyone. That is my hope.

A more optimistic hope is that many Republicans will embrace the concept of the non-profit single-payer health insurance organization, funded by a combination of premiums paid by individuals and a subsidy from the government. This system will be a godsend to businesses who are trying to cope with rising premiums and increasing deductibles in the insurance plans they buy for their employees. If we can relieve responsible business men of the responsibility and extra cost of providing health insurance for their employees, we will improve their competitive advantage in the increasingly global market in which they must operate. Republicans who champion the cause of business should enthusiastically embrace this concept.

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Comments:
Mr. Bush has certainly earned the right to be impeached and convicted and sent to prison. It may be that the new Democratic majority in the House can pass a bill of impeachment. The Senate will not convict. By impeaching President Clinton for trivial reasons, the Republicans has spoiled impeachment as a possible means of removing a President for at least a generation. Any attempt to impeach Mr. Bush will appear to a large part of the public as simple "pay-back."

Besides, the new Democratic leadership in the House must recognize that they need Republican allies if they are to enact the reforms they want: raising the minimum wage, letting Medicare negotiate drug prices, trying to fix the nation's broken health care system, trying to fix the almost-broken private pension system, reducing the structural deficit brought about by Bush's silly tax cuts, and others. There are many Republicans who didn't like the leadership policy of Hastert which effectively froze all Democrats and a minority of Republicans out of the process of creating legislation. Those Republicans can be valuable allies to Pelosi and other Democratic leaders. Impeaching the President will turn them into bitter enemies.
 
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