An Interesting Take from the Right

I will freely admit that I am a moderate leftist. I tend to want compromise, consensus, and reasoned debate with passion, but not the insanity that we are seeing now. I fear the breakdown of civility and civil society.

David Frum, long time Republican strategist, has given a take on health reform. In a post on the New Majority site, he asks "What if we Win the Healthcare Fight?"

He writes in the bulk of his post:

The problem is that if we do that… we’ll still have the present healthcare system. Meaning that we’ll have (1) flat-lining wages, (2) exploding Medicaid and Medicare costs and thus immense pressure for future tax increases, (3) small businesses and self-employed individuals priced out of the insurance market, and (4) a lot of uninsured or underinsured people imposing costs on hospitals and local governments.

We’ll have entrenched and perpetuated some of the most irrational features of a hugely costly and under-performing system, at the expense of entrepreneurs and risk-takers, exactly the people the Republican party exists to champion.

Not a good outcome.

Even worse will be the way this fight is won: basically by convincing older Americans already covered by a government health program, Medicare, that Obama’s reform plans will reduce their coverage. In other words, we’ll have sent a powerful message to the entire political system to avoid at all hazards any tinkering with Medicare except to make it more generous for the already covered.

If we win, we’ll trumpet the success as a great triumph for liberty and individualism. Really though it will be a triumph for inertia. To the extent that anybody in the conservative world still aspires to any kind of future reform and improvement of America’s ossified government, that should be a very ashy victory indeed.

It is interesting to note that Frum himself is sort of a pragmatist, though a hard-nosed strategist. Brad DeLong, whom I got the posting from, oddly enough, is a little more acerbic in his response.

However, more than anything else, it has the ring of Pearlstein's column I linked to the other day. Both writers essentially say, that should healthcare reform fail, it is not only the Waterloo of Obama, but a Waterloo for this country as to whether we can really institute sensible reforms in the first place.

I think the fact that such discussion comes from both sides is important. Also key to note is that while Frum does not support a public option, he really does support a great deal of the thrust of health reform, including the all important regulated marketplace of exchanges. He has his list of reforms conservatives should support.

As a more liberal pragmatist see a chance to compromise here, and a lot of common ground. The question is to whether passions on both sides are willing to give up some of the heated debate, and distortion tactics, and focus on these common ground areas that we have, which will make major changes to health care.