In Which I Feel Sorry for Ramesh Ponnuru…
Kevin Drum:
Republicans Really, Really Don't Care About Improving Healthcare: Ramesh Ponnuru argues today that Republicans are foolish for hanging their hats on the likelihood that Obamacare will die a fiery death in 2014…. [He says] Republicans need to get busy now coming up with a replacement healthcare plan….
Congressional Republicans have not reached agreement on what should replace Obamacare, let alone a strategy for enacting that replacement. The best option for replacing Obamacare would be a plan that made it possible for almost everyone in the country to purchase catastrophic insurance (and possible for most people to buy insurance that goes beyond catastrophic coverage) by removing the obstacles that government policy puts in the way of that goal. A plan to do that would involve six key steps…
I'll spare you the six steps…. I think Paul Waldman's response pretty much says what needs to be said:
The biggest problem with this kind of appeal is that he will never, ever get anything beyond a tiny number of Republicans to invest any effort in coming up with a health-care plan. That would involve understanding a complex topic, weighing competing values and considerations against one another, and eventually getting behind something that will be something of a compromise. And let me say it again: They. Just. Don't. Care.
I don't blame Ponnuru and others…. I think they're kind of crazy to think their proposed plan would (a) work, (b) be politically attractive, or (c) be popular, but maybe that's just my liberal bias talking. What's not my liberal bias talking, however, is the plain fact that conservatives don't care about expanding access to healthcare…. They periodically put on a show whenever Democrats propose something that looks like it might have legs, but it's purely defensive. When the threat goes away, so does the show. This has happened like clockwork for decades.
