Excellent Krugman column today about Obama & health care

From http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/opinion/26krugman.html?_r=1:


Not Enough Audacity

By PAUL KRUGMAN

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The big question here is whether health care is about to go the way of the stimulus bill.

At the beginning of this year, you may remember, Mr. Obama made an eloquent case for a strong economic stimulus — then delivered a proposal falling well short of what independent analysts (and, I suspect, his own economists) considered necessary. The goal, presumably, was to attract bipartisan support. But in the event, Mr. Obama was able to pick up only three Senate Republicans by making a plan that was already too weak even weaker.

At the time, some of us warned about what might happen: if unemployment surpassed the administration’s optimistic projections, Republicans wouldn’t accept the need for more stimulus. Instead, they’d declare the whole economic policy a failure. And that’s exactly how it’s playing out. With the unemployment rate now almost certain to pass 10 percent, there’s an overwhelming economic case for more stimulus. But as a political matter it’s going to be harder, not easier, to get that extra stimulus now than it would have been to get the plan right in the first place.

The point is that if you’re making big policy changes, the final form of the policy has to be good enough to do the job. You might think that half a loaf is always better than none — but it isn’t if the failure of half-measures ends up discrediting your whole policy approach.

Which brings us back to health care. It would be a crushing blow to progressive hopes if Mr. Obama doesn’t succeed in getting some form of universal care through Congress. But even so, reform isn’t worth having if you can only get it on terms so compromised that it’s doomed to fail.

What will determine the success or failure of reform? Above all, the success of reform depends on successful cost control. We really, really don’t want to get into a position a few years from now where premiums are rising rapidly, many Americans are priced out of the insurance market despite government subsidies, and the cost of health care subsidies is a growing strain on the budget.

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Indeed, the prospects for such savings are precisely what have the opponents of a public plan so terrified. Mr. Obama was right: if they really believed their own rhetoric about government waste and inefficiency, they wouldn’t be so worried that the public option would put private insurers out of business. Behind the boilerplate about big government, rationing and all that lies the real concern: fear that the public plan would succeed.

So Mr. Obama and Democrats in Congress have to hang tough — no more gratuitous giveaways in the attempt to sound reasonable. And reform advocates have to keep up the pressure to stay on track. Yes, the perfect is the enemy of the good; but so is the not-good-enough-to-work. Health reform has to be done right.

:sarcasm:

reading it know. :)

bipartisanship ... when one side is totally determined to sabotage the other as today's Repubs are determined to have Obama fail ... is highly overrated. The be-all and end-all should be to get a health care plan that will be a huge improvement over what the situation is now, where we currently have the most expensive health care system in the industrialized world and the one that is the least responsive and accessible to the people it is supposed to serve.

Today's Republicans and the Republicans-lite who appear to constitute Obama's closest circle of advisors cannot seem to see the big picture. Republicans and their DINO allies are only interested in themselves and their rich friends ... let us NEVER forget that. Insofar as they can't or won't see the big picture, they are working against the interests of all.

I don't believe that Obama himself is a sell-out, by any means, but yes, I do believe that he should have been ... and can still be ... much bolder with both his economic and health care efforts. We've got his back and he should trust us to be there for him.