The Very Disappointing Derek Thompson Reaction to Liberal Criticism of Simpson-Bowles
It was disappointing.
The worst and most unfair part, I thought, was this slam against Kevin Drum:
The Disappointing Liberal Reaction to the Deficit Commission: The third most frustrating criticism comes from folks like Kevin Drum, who claims that any effort to reduce the deficit that isn't 98% health care reform isn't serious. The fact is, there are no feasible ways to definitively curb health care inflation starting today (if Kevin has some in mind we need to hear them!). We can shoot a thousand arrows at the medical inflation monster -- health care reform, to its great credit, does. We can nudge providers and customers away from pay-for-service, which rewards over-treatment. We can increase cost-sharing to help patients react to prices, increase transparency and quality through exchanges, and so on. But these are efforts, not answers. If we waited for the messianic Answer to health care inflation, we might never act on the budget. I can't imagine that's what Kevin would prefer. Instead, we should make the changes we can make today, slowly.
It is unfair because Kevin Drum is right: any effort to reduce the deficit that is not 98% health care reform is indeed not serious.
It is unfair because the things that Derek Thompson implies that Kevin does not talk about--"We can nudge providers and customers away from pay-for-service, which rewards over-treatment. We can increase cost-sharing to help patients react to prices, increase transparency and quality through exchanges, and so on. But these are efforts, not answers. If we waited for the messianic Answer to health care inflation, we might never act on the budget. I can't imagine that's what Kevin would prefer. Instead, we should make the changes we can make today, slowly"--are the kinds of things Kevin regularly talks about.
And it is unfair because Simpson and Bowles don't talk about how they are going to achieve any of this. Indeed, their only concrete, legislative, ready-to-go proposal is to raise the deficit from health care above its current-law baseline level: "Replace cuts required by SGR through 2015 with modest reductions while directing CMS to establish a new payment system, beginning in 2015, to reduce costs and improve quality."
http://www.fiscalcommission.gov/sites/fiscalcommission.gov/files/documents/CoChair_Draft.pdf
