This article about lawmakers worried about 2010 repeats a meme whose popularity has really started to bother me:
Their political fortunes next year are likely to hinge on whether the U.S. economy, in its longest and deepest recession since the Great Depression, improves and if Congress passes a significant healthcare reform bill.
People keep talking about health care reform being Obama’s Waterloo. It’s not. It’s his Heraclea, his Asculum, a potential Pyrrhic victory that might destroy his party. Americans are generally happy with their healthcare, and abhor gov’t rationing and government mandates in a way Europeans and Japanese don’t. Our cultural identity is built around individualism and liberty. That’s why “reform” gets less popular they more people hear about specific proposals.
The latest offering, BaucusCare, isn’t quite as egregious but offers a lot of the same problems:
Mandate
Some penalty for employers who don’t buy health insurance for low-wage workers
Medicaid up to 133% of the poverty line
Tax credits for buying insurance up to 300% of the poverty line
Taxes on cadillac coverage that greatly exceeds the national average
Guaranteed issue
Something close to community rating
I’m shaking my head waiting for the collective “omg wtf” from Generation Y as they find out they’re going to be required to pay for all this. They may never vote Democrat again.
Also, if you do something that includes both community rating and guaranteed issue, I think a very real and ugly constitutionality problem arises for mandates, because now you’re explicitly forcing younger, healthier people to subsidize the rest. (And some people will just refuse to do it. Then what? Do we send in SWAT teams? Enforcement could be very sticky, offering many opportunities for state ugliness.)
What if the government required you to buy a pound of cheese every year? Would that be constitutional?
This is actually much worse. At least you’d have some hope of getting a fair value for your cheese-buying. This is like saying everyone has to pay $10 for the cheese, and older people will get 1.5 lbs and younger people .5 lbs.
The Waterloo meme may be helpful to Democratic ideologues who really really think socialism will work and to Republicans who are happy to pick up the pieces when an outraged public gets hit with the bill (and the baton), but it’s bad for America.
Comments
2 responses to “The Waterloo Myth”
“Mandate?” Sorry, but I thought We were supposed to give THEM mandates.
One thing that drives the Tea Partiers is awakening fury at the Olympian arrogance of our elected officials. Now, I can understand the arrogance – they are so secure in their sinecures that they think they’re entitled to them. Whether the Tea Party movement translates into a “Throw the bums out” one is a big if. Just about every elected official needs a bog hot cup of “You Work for ME!”
Worse, it’s not Waterloo, so is bad metaphor. If Obama gets a law with a trigger and fines every young person without a plan, and gets either any kind of tort reform OR a law with in-name-only reforms, it’s the retreat from Moscow: he’s still in the field, but with a vastly reduced force.
If he goes for reconciliation with public options, that’s his Phyrric victory. It will be followed by the Capture of Paris, er, the House in 2010.