Health Care: The Devil Is In The Details

Several liberal bloggers, such as Greg Anrig at TPMCafe and Kevin Drum of Political Animal are calling for making support for universal health care a sort of litmus test for 2008. They argue that the blogosphere is nearly 100% behind universal health care while no major Democratic politicians are taking on the issue. Kevin Drum writes:

The liberal blogosphere disagrees about gun control, disagrees about the war in Iraq, disagrees about the role of labor, disagrees about nearly everything. But as near as I can tell, support for national healthcare is so unanimous and well accepted in the left blogosphere that it barely even merits discussion. Mostly it’s just taken for granted. Hell, even Mickey Kaus supports universal healthcare.

This is a little odd, isn’t it? Can you think of any other major policy issue that’s (a) universally supported by liberal bloggers but (b) almost universally feared by major Democratic politicians? There are plenty of disconnects between the activist blogosphere and mainstream liberal politicians, but is there any other disconnect quite this deep and this clear?

What they miss, and what is recognized by those who actually write legislation, is that the devil is in the details. Most liberal bloggers support universal health care. Most liberal bloggers also support clean air, and end to poverty, and peace on earth. The question is how we accomplish this.

Affordable health care for all is a worthy goal, but going about it the wrong way could be disastrous. We saw this with Hillary Care which would have been worse than the status quo for medical care–something recognized by most voters contributing to the Republican take over of Congress. Such unwillingness to accept compromise was also a reason why, after all the hopeful talk, we wound up with nothing.

In 2004 both John Kerry and Howard Dean offered major health care proposals which would be a tremendous improvement on the current system, providing affordable health care to far more people even if falling short of providing universal health care. Their proposals shared two important similarities: they were feasible to execute at an affordable cost, and they could be sold to the voters if we could get their message out over the Republican Noise Machine’s false claims that they advocated a “government take over of health care.”

Liberal bloggers are well aware of the advantages of a single payer system and how little return we receive for what is spent under our current system. This doesn’t mean that there are no obstacles in converting to a single payer system. At the moment I would fear whether such a plan would be adequetley funded considering the priorities of the current Republican government. During the 2004 campaign I often answered questions from people who were legitmately undecided about Kerry’s health care plan through either the campaign forum or email sent to Doctors for Kerry. A common concern raised by many who were happy with their present plan was whether they would be allowed to do so. While Kerry’s plan would have allowed this, advocating a plan which did not would jeopardize the support from such people. The Republicans understand such sentiments when they raise their false claims of “government take over of health care” or scream “socialized medicine” knowing that most will not understand the important distinctions between universal health care, single payer plans, and actual government-run health care.

The most significant advancement in providing health care came when Democrats were willing to compromise and accept Medicare to cover the elderly and disabled rather than covering everyone. Liberal bloggers should not be so inflexible as to only consider candidates who are not willing to compromise, as such compromises may be the best way to achieve progressive change. Support for a health care plan which falls short of providing universal care should not disqualify a candidate from receiving the support of the liberal blogoshere.