Matt Yglesias linked to an interesting article over in the British Prospect, titled
Red State Sneer
Unfortunately most dKos type liberals will most likely immediately reject this article because it talks about various liberal stereotypes. I think that would be a mistake, for contained within are a variety of gems.
My parents and I were speaking about this very same subject this weekend. We were talking about social security, and I brought up
this Kevin Drum post over at Washington Monthly which discusses life expectancy and how it's largely slown down in terms of increases. I raised a point that to continue increasing life expectancy meant more spending in medical technology, and to get those small increases was going to result in ever larger costs...
And I noted that I think this is the reason why healthcare costs are increasing rather quickly. That is, it's not so much unnecessary crap, as it is that expectation that we will live forever has resulted in expanding costs. And my mother made another comment... 'throwing more money at this isn't going to solve the problem. It never does.'
Her statement coincides with an observation I made in college, that it seemed the more money the government gave out in grants the faster tuition increased.
Back to Matthew Lind's article. I was struck by this paragraph in particular, although I'm going to go back and reread it to think about some of the other points.
Indeed, the Democrats are no longer the party of the working class so much as the party of the urban professional elite and the working poor. Thanks to reforms backed by Democrats, the working poor have been removed from the income tax rolls and their wages are boosted by the earned income tax credit. Most working-class Americans, however, make too much money to benefit from either reform. The Democrats have also fought unsuccessfully for universal healthcare schemes. But most working-class Americans already have health insurance provided by their employers; rising out-of-pocket health costs, not coverage, is their chief concern. And there is no consensus among Democrats about what to do to prevent the growth of healthcare costs from continuing to outstrip productivity growth. The Republicans do have an idea, but it is a bad one - personal health savings accounts, which would deter many Americans from consuming necessary as well as unnecessary healthcare.
I found this insightful.
The Democrats have made many mistakes over the years, but I do think foremost amongst those is the simplistic big-government thinking. That is, to solve the healthcare crisis what we need to do is throw more money at it. Although to be fair, an aspect of a govt run healthcare system is the shared costs and lower overhead from reduced levels of middle-men. But I don't think that's quite enough.
So I'm not convinced that's the solution, and I don't think many Americans are either which is why this proposal doesn't win elections. Matthew Lind points out, the Republican solution isn't a solution either (He didn't mention tort reform), which means they are incredibly vulnerable if we have a viable alternative.
I don't have an answer, but I am suggesting that we rethink this problem. I think lowering healthcare costs benefits all Americans. As Lind notes, it's the costs that hurt... coverage by and large is already achieved for most voters. But if we get the costs down, that will help those without coverage attain it.
Think about it... This goes for a number of other things as well. Sometimes the problem that we think is the problem, isn't really the problem.