Last night July 28, 2009, Terry Gross hosted Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman of Princeton, and the NY Times, and economist Stuart Butler of the American Heritage Foundation in an extended conversation about Health Care Reform on her show Fresh Air. It's available as an audio file and runs about 38 minutes.
It's an amazing interview: Krugman is well known for his liberal perspective; Butler is representing one of the core Conservative think tanks in this country. Both of them begin by agreeing that the American health care system is a mess and something has to be done. What they view as the nature of the problem, and what should be done about it is where they differ.
While there is a lot of demagoguery going on about the cost of reform, this session rise far above the usual media fog by featuring two people who actually have a clue about economics - and can speak clearly about it. If you want an informative debate that looks at the cost issues, this is definitely a must listen radio show. NPR has been doing some of the best coverage anywhere on Health Care Reform.
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Butler is originally from Britain, and his early experiences with the British National Health System give him actual experience with a nationwide healthcare system. He raises some excellent points; and so does Krugman. Terry Gross contributes greatly to the overall conversation by asking some intelligent questions in a thoughtful way.
The debate over healthcare in this country has largely become a war of talking points and fear mongering rather than a reasoned, fact-based discussion. While the whole interview is worth a listen, several things in particular caught my attention.
Butler notes that in Britain there was a national conversation about health care reform when they first decided to make health care a national program, and that is not happening in this country. (Of course, the British came up with their system decades ago, before the rise of cable news and talking heads.)
Krugman notes that we do not really have the option of doing nothing; within 10 years the trends we see operating today will have completely wrecked health care as we know it. One scenario he mentions is that we could end up with the government paying the insurance companies to manage health care - whether or not they actually add any value to the process. This would not be a good thing, as Krugman describes it.
Overall, the difference between the two in terms of language and emotional imagery is marked. Butler continually talks about alarming, questionable and disturbing elements in the proposals being discussed. Krugman takes a far more pragmatic approach; while he sees problems, he does not see them as insoluble and he thinks we can do something about the intolerable mess we currently have.
This could be the most useful 38 minutes of your time this week. Go give it a listen.
UPDATE: For those of you who can't get streaming audio, you can subscribe to free podcasts of Fresh Air through iTunes.