28 August 2012
The Cheesecake Factory and Healthcare
The real point of Dr. Atul Gawande’s article on the Cheesecake Factory and healthcare in a recent New Yorker is that we can no longer afford to maintain our standard of physical well-being without sacrificing our reliance on un-standardized medical services. Yes, this will require some form of control. Our society has always chosen to rely on Government to exert this control. That’s how we manage defense, public safety, environmental preservation, building infrastructure, etc.
The record of the past few decades shows that the free market has failed to keep affordable the cost of maintaining the public’s health, particularly as the baby boomers age and they expect to live comfortably. All too much energy has been used in arguing between free-marketeers and government welfare advocates. We need to devote as much energy to convincing the public that its expectation is unrealistic that we can ever generate enough income to pay for the world’s best equitably distributed health care the way we’re doing it now.
The real point of Dr. Atul Gawande’s article on the Cheesecake Factory and healthcare in a recent New Yorker is that we can no longer afford to maintain our standard of physical well-being without sacrificing our reliance on un-standardized medical services. Yes, this will require some form of control. Our society has always chosen to rely on Government to exert this control. That’s how we manage defense, public safety, environmental preservation, building infrastructure, etc.
The record of the past few decades shows that the free market has failed to keep affordable the cost of maintaining the public’s health, particularly as the baby boomers age and they expect to live comfortably. All too much energy has been used in arguing between free-marketeers and government welfare advocates. We need to devote as much energy to convincing the public that its expectation is unrealistic that we can ever generate enough income to pay for the world’s best equitably distributed health care the way we’re doing it now.
23 August 2012
Romney’s First Thing is to Get Elected
David Brooks makes an interesting case in the 8/21/2012 New York Time that the first thing that needs to be addressed by a Romney/Ryan federal administration is getting the Medicare budget under control. However, the addition of Representative Paul Ryan to the Republican ticket does not mean that Romney has put that mandate first in his priorities. What it means is that his first priority is getting elected. The Ryan budget uses control of social welfare costs as a disguise for reducing taxes on the upper income stratus of American voters whose financial support is central to Romney’s strategy for convincing the electorate to vote for him in the key battleground states this November. That campaign of media persuasion will cost money and promising smaller government to individuals and corporations is the price that Romney has decided to pay.
Following this course is to walk away from demanding responsibility on the part of those who benefit most from our free-enterprise system for creating as equitable a community in America as we can afford. Relying on the market to sort out our expensive Medicare program ignores the reason that America has such an unsustainable bill for maintaining the health of its aging population—our belief that people are entitled to outlive natural limits on their wellness. What is really needed is to orient Americans to accept the consequences of the baby-boom: we all will eventually die. The Democratic way to deal with that reality is for us to share its cost, rather than to allow those who can afford to delay its result to place the burden of illness and discomfort on the rest of us.
David Brooks makes an interesting case in the 8/21/2012 New York Time that the first thing that needs to be addressed by a Romney/Ryan federal administration is getting the Medicare budget under control. However, the addition of Representative Paul Ryan to the Republican ticket does not mean that Romney has put that mandate first in his priorities. What it means is that his first priority is getting elected. The Ryan budget uses control of social welfare costs as a disguise for reducing taxes on the upper income stratus of American voters whose financial support is central to Romney’s strategy for convincing the electorate to vote for him in the key battleground states this November. That campaign of media persuasion will cost money and promising smaller government to individuals and corporations is the price that Romney has decided to pay.
Following this course is to walk away from demanding responsibility on the part of those who benefit most from our free-enterprise system for creating as equitable a community in America as we can afford. Relying on the market to sort out our expensive Medicare program ignores the reason that America has such an unsustainable bill for maintaining the health of its aging population—our belief that people are entitled to outlive natural limits on their wellness. What is really needed is to orient Americans to accept the consequences of the baby-boom: we all will eventually die. The Democratic way to deal with that reality is for us to share its cost, rather than to allow those who can afford to delay its result to place the burden of illness and discomfort on the rest of us.
17 August 2012
Ryan Budget—Real or Fairy-Tale?
It’s interesting to contrast two conservatives’ takes on the Representative Paul Ryan budget proposal that appeared in the August 16, 2012 Wall Street Journal (Daniel Mitchell’s “What’s Really in the Ryan Budget”) and in the August 13, 2012 New York Times (David Stockman’s “Paul Ryan’s Fairy-Tale Budget Plan”). Cato Institute’s Mitchell praises the Ryan plan as a good starting point to begin reform of federal fiscal policy should Governor Romney win the November election. Former Reagan OMB Director Stockman points out many failures of the Ryan plan to make the hard expenditure cuts (including defense, banking regulation, income-based eligibility for welfare entitlements) as well as its unrealistic call for “tax expenditures” that the “crony capitalists of K Street” would never let a Republican Congress get away with.
Good intentions may be enough to bring “substance” to the Romney/Ryan campaign rhetoric; but real programs (likely including defense cuts, refined regulation of the private sector, and increased tax revenues) will be needed to solve the country’s economic problems
It’s interesting to contrast two conservatives’ takes on the Representative Paul Ryan budget proposal that appeared in the August 16, 2012 Wall Street Journal (Daniel Mitchell’s “What’s Really in the Ryan Budget”) and in the August 13, 2012 New York Times (David Stockman’s “Paul Ryan’s Fairy-Tale Budget Plan”). Cato Institute’s Mitchell praises the Ryan plan as a good starting point to begin reform of federal fiscal policy should Governor Romney win the November election. Former Reagan OMB Director Stockman points out many failures of the Ryan plan to make the hard expenditure cuts (including defense, banking regulation, income-based eligibility for welfare entitlements) as well as its unrealistic call for “tax expenditures” that the “crony capitalists of K Street” would never let a Republican Congress get away with.
Good intentions may be enough to bring “substance” to the Romney/Ryan campaign rhetoric; but real programs (likely including defense cuts, refined regulation of the private sector, and increased tax revenues) will be needed to solve the country’s economic problems
