Torture link of the day (posted by DT)

This is an old article by Glenn Greenwald, but it has in one place lots of links and information documenting how the US government (that's us) has killed over 100 people in custody when torture tactics went too far.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/06/30/accountability/

Now I guess it may make us feel better to respond that "they're all terrorists anyway so who cares", but if we're open-minded enough to give this a careful reading we have to conclude that not all these people were terrorists; these are detainees, many picked up on random sweeps through Iraq and Afghanistan. Our government has been doing the same thing that we condemn authoritarian regimes for doing. When the Viet Cong did this to John McCain it was torture. When the Soviet Union did it to dissidents it was torture. And yet in our current political environment we have one party (Republicans) who enthusiastically embrace torture, and a second party (Democrats) who seem at best ambivalent about it and certainly unwilling to take it on.

Our political discourse starts with an assumption that "we're the good guys". But this isn't self-evident to people in other places. We have to prove it every day.

I am now a wacked-out, fringe Leftist nut for taking the position that torture is wrong, which was a majority position in this country on September 10, 2001.

Health Care Clarity (posted by DT)

Well, this week's "Health Care Summit" again helped clarify where we're at politically with respect to health care reform, and I can only dream that it will move us away from dreary platitudes about how we need bipartisan reform. We shouldn't have bipartisan reform because liberals and conservatives have different goals. President Obama ran for president arguing for Universal Health Care, in which all Americans would be able to get health insurance no matter what. That's what Democratic leaders are trying to deliver.

Republicans clearly don't share this goal. They might support some form of cost controls, plans to cut the growth of health care costs, and certainly want to increase free market influence on health care. They want malpractice reform. All of that is fine; it just doesn't accomplish the goal of universal health care.

Now some conservatives feel this way because they don't think that poor people deserve to get health coverage if they can't afford it- I guess the argument is that we're a capitalist country and it's every man for himself- only the strong can survive. Other conservatives would like to make health care universal, as they see the injustice for those with pre-existing conditions out of their control who can't get coverage, but they just don't want to raise any tax revenue to pay for it. Low taxes are just seen as more important.

So the answer is for Democrats to finish health care and pass a bill. I wish I had more confidence in their ability to do it. As I've said before, I'm struck by the gutlessness of congressional Democrats, and wish they had half the courage displayed by Republicans when they were in power.

I'm trying to be fair to people on the Right, here. Did I miss something?

Reader Response (posted by DT)

I love and crave reader responses! This came from one of my loyal readers:

You propagate a fundamental problem in political discourse. It’s not ‘us’ vs. ‘them,’ democrats vs. republicans, or liberals vs. conservatives. Serious discussion about the issues we face should not be reduced to, or portrayed in terms of, which team is gaining or losing points. It drives me crazy how all the major media outlets focus on the two teams – three if you count Tea Party and four if you throw in Blue Dogs – and which is winning or losing ground as we march toward the next round of elections.

If party leaders were more tolerant of independent thinkers within their party, if lawmakers were more willing to follow their beliefs on individual issues, and if the media focused on the issues themselves without always resorting to the implications on political gamesmanship, we might actually be able to get things done. As it stands, status quo will endure indefinitely.

I think this is a fair point, and I certainly agree that the media's focus on "horse race" politics is a huge part of the problem in our political discourse.

But we need to understand that liberals and conservatives have fundamentally different views about what our country should look like and stand for. The conservatives I know mostly seem to believe that taxes must be lowered no matter what, and spending slashed accordingly, so that the Free Market can bring prosperity to all. If you believe that tax relief is the #1 priority, then you can legitimately be against any national health care because, frankly, it will cost money. One of my problems with conservatives right now is it's not realistic to be against any tax increases whatsoever while being simultaneously against a large government deficit, unless you have lots of enormous cuts in spending, including on Medicare. I guess a conservative arguing this point would say that tax cuts will spur so much growth that government revenue will increase to compensate and pull us out of the hole.

As a liberal, on the other hand, I see justice as a primary goal, more important than tax cuts. I believe that government, while not particularly efficient, is still capable of solving problems and improving the lives of its citizens. That's why I'm in favor of government action to improve health care and make sure it's provided for all citizens.

These two views are in conflict, as they should be. Arguing the philosophies above isn't very productive, because it comes down to our sense of right and wrong. But we can certainly argue about which policy inspired by each side would be more effective in solving each problem. It's pretty clear that the free market is the best way to manufacture consumer goods like washing machines and cars, and provide entertainment like movies and TV shows, along with tons of other stuff. It's clear that the government is best at providing police and fire department protection and staffing agencies to protect abused children. For everything in between, we should be arguing what works better.

That's not "us vs. them"; it's a serious discussion about which policies we should all be supporting. I make no apologies for my view that liberal policies are better for more people; that's why I'm arguing so hard for them.

Is the Federal Stimulus Working? (posted by DT)

YES.


Pretty much every serious economist says (or for those on the Right, "admits") that the federal stimulus package has created jobs and saved us from a much more severe economic downturn, even if they may disagree about how much it's done, how many jobs it's created, etc.


And of course government action to pump up the economy started under the Bush administration, which generally did an effective job bailing out Wall Street when conditions were dire. The Obama administration just continued those strategies, even with many of the same people involved (Bernanke, Paulson).


So it's great, right? Bipartisan action working toward a common and rather obvious goal of staving off a second Great Depression. Just one problem: the wing nuts who run the Republican party are now saying that the stimulus hasn't created "a single job" (I believe Scott Brown said that). National Review doesn't think it has done anything. Tea Partiers certainly don't think it's been effective, since it was implemented by the Obama administration. But when you ask people who study this stuff for a living, everyone agrees that it's done something. The positive response of the stock market shows that private investors are OK with stimulus spending. But the Tea Party Right isn't going along- what would have happened if they had been in power? We'd be in a free-fall Depression.

I think this is the tough part of being a reasonable conservative these days. The Republican party has been hijacked by really deranged people. If you want lower taxes and lower spending, I don't know where you would go these days; Republicans are going to lower taxes but have proved pretty conclusively that they'll keep spending, making our deficit much worse. Democrats are much more fiscally responsible at this point, but they want to lower the deficit at least in part by increasing taxes. So where does a true fiscal conservative go?

So let me extend an invitation: come on over here to the Liberal side of the street. Yes you'll have to swallow increased spending on health care for the poor, but at least we'll raise revenues at the same time instead of passing the costs on to your grandchildren. And you have to admit it: Brie tastes good and Birkenstocks are comfortable!

More on Torture (posted by DT)

I guess I'm now considered out of the mainstream when it comes to interrogation and torture. I find this fact depressing, given that it wasn't too long ago that there was a pretty clear consensus in the US that we were the "good guys" who would win the Cold War because we were seen by common people everywhere as the bastion of Freedom and Democracy, bringers of prosperity. The USSR, on the other hand, were the authoritarians who arrested people for no reason or with little evidence, and sent severed limbs back to whoever pissed them off to make sure that they knew who they were messing with.

Now, in the Age of "24", we're so post-modern that we don't believe in that claptrap any more I guess. But there are lots of problems with torture outside of the moral element:

• How are we supposed to know if the guys we're torturing are really terrorists? As I noted in my earlier post, we've been picking up lots of "alleged terrorists" in sweeps all over Afghanistan and Iraq, and lots of them have turned out to be innocent. (Remember even the Bush administration released lots of people from Gitmo because they weren't terrorists). Without any legal system or rules of evidence, we could be torturing the wrong people. Before you sneer that I'm protecting Bad Guys, note that we ALREADY HAVE tortured innocent people: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/25/world/americas/25arar.html or http://www.truthout.org/1210093
• Torture doesn't work as a method of gaining information. Professional interrogators from the FBI and the military have been appalled by these tactics. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/28/AR2008112802242_pf.html Torture is really good for extracting false confessions- that's what authoritarian regimes use it for, not to get good intelligence. When you're getting tortured, you'll say anything to get the torture to stop, and that certainly includes lying.
• The "Ticking Time Bomb" scenario popularized in the TV series 24 just never happens. It's great drama, but it's not real life. How many people do we torture looking for the one guy in 100 who might know something?
• Torture is a runaway train- it can't be used in a limited way only in extreme cases- it always migrates to everything. Look at Abu Ghraib- people on the ground take it and run with it. Besides, the logic extends to increased use: if torture is OK to find terrorists, then shouldn't we use it to find common murderers? What about rapists? Why only foreign citizens?

Finally, it's important to note that the Orwellian use of terms like "enhanced interrogation" are a smokescreen. We should call it what it is. The difference between waterboarding or sleep deprivation or hanging in stress positions on one hand (all used by the US in recent years), and cutting off fingers on the other is a difference only in severity. There have been dozens of DEATHS of detainees in US custody that occurred because the "enhanced interrogation" went a little too far- how can that not be torture?

Terrorism By Any Other Name (Posted by AS)

Some truly chilling developments yesterday:

Name a man who intentionally flew an airplane into an office building because he is angry at the actions of the people inside and who they represent.

Mohammed Atta? Marwan Al-Shehhi? Ahmed Al-Haznawi?



Add the name Joseph Stack to the list. There is no difference, other than the size of the plane and the number of people who were killed.


It’s only by luck that nobody in the IRS building in Texas was killed. Stack clearly didn’t care who else he took with him. He didn’t care what would happen to the people inside. There could have been a day-care center there too, like in Oklahoma City. But Stack was so motivated by fear, hate and ideological fervor, that nothing was going to stop him from carrying out his evil plan.

We can expect more death and destruction at the hands of the radical right wing. The Tea Partiers are riling up all sorts of anti-government fringe elements. At CPAC yesterday, Tea Party leaders encouraged their followers to wage a grass roots war on liberalism.

To quote Dana Loesch with the St. Louis Tea Party: “We have several bars that are infested with liberals in St. Louis. Go there, take them over. Say how much you love the Constitution! Say it loud! Make them feel uncomfortable. Have no mercy, take no prisoners, suffer no fools. Don’t let them have a sanctuary.”



That kind of stuff really sends chills down my spine. It reminds me of the type of language heard in beer halls in Munich in the late 1920’s. If nothing else, it is borderline incitement to violence. It’s not a stretch at all to envision another Joseph Stack taking such language and actually going to such a bar and firebombing it. Mark my words.

Of course, all of this is going on with the encouragement of Republican Party leaders like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, who are scared to death that the Tea Partiers will find them insufficiently ideologically pure and roust them from office. John McCain and Charlie Crist are facing vigorous primary challenges from the far right.

Even Mitt Romney has been forced to drink the Kool-Aid. Of course, he only got thunderous applause at CPAC when he made snide attacks against Obama. However, when Romney actually talked about his plans for helping the economy from a business perspective, or defended GW Bush for his fiscal and education policy, the response was much more subdued. The state of the Republican Party is such that Romney now has zero chance of being elected President in 2012. He might as well give up and save his millions now. It’s clear what direction the Republican Party is headed. It may be old, but it sure ain’t Grand.

Editorial Disagreement (Posted by AS)

First of all, I guess it's pretty sad that only the bloggers are commenting on their own blog - If a blog tree falls in the forest and nobody reads it...

Anyway, I feel it incumbent as the more centrist member of this blog to comment on Dan's most recent post on torture. I take a somewhat different view.

Yes, the U.S. is obligated to conduct itself according to international law and universally accepted norms on "torture", etc., etc., etc. But to compare the treatment of the Christian missionaries in Haiti to that of the Guantanamo detainees seems to strain credulity. Clearly, the potential for important information being extracted from terror suspects is far, far greater than anything in the investigation of "Orphangate."

Maybe I'm missing Dan's point, but I have no problem with "hard interrogation" of people who are actively involved in sowing terror against our country. Maybe some of those at Guantanamo aren't guilty of what they are accused, but Islamic Fundamentalists are still at war with the U.S., an asymmetrical war where the rules are a whole lot different than in a criminal prosecution.

The US Double Standard on Torture (posted by DT)

I have this quaint, old-fashioned belief that a free, democratic, ethical society should continue its centuries-long tradition of following the rule of law, even after a terrible terror attack on its soil. Glenn Greenwald here http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/02/14/haiti/index.html
points out the hypocrisy of those on the Right who now protest Haiti's treatment of Christian missionaries who were allegedly trying to illegally take children out of the country, even after those same commentators from the Right cheered on far worse treatment of detainees of the War on Terror who have been tortured and killed by our government. Keep in mind that at least some of these victims of American torture are completely innocent of terrorism or conspiring against the US, and in fact were just caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Don't believe me? Read this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/international/asia/20abuse.html?_r=2

Evan Bayh and the "Moderate" fallacy- posted by DT

Evan Bayh is retiring from the Senate, and it looks like he will be mourned as one of the few "moderates" trying to get things done while the Left and Right can only bicker. But what does it mean to be "moderate"? What do moderates believe in?

Now I'm not saying that you have to be a radical in order to believe in something- I think there are true moderates out there, and many of them are my friends. But what Evan Bayh and Olympia Snowe seem to be doing is looking Left, looking Right, and deciding that if they're right between those poles, then they must be right.

Now let's take an example: the Stimulus Bill passed early last year. Keynesian Economists said it should be well over $1 Trillion in order to have the desired effect and kick-start the economy. Obama then proposed around an $850 Billion stimulus in order to be more moderate. So then "moderates" in the Senate (Bayh, Ben Nelson, Snowe) said it had to be under $800 Billion or they woudn't vote for it. Why that number? Because it's less than what Obama wanted, which was in turn less than what the economic experts wanted, but more than the Right wanted (which was zero I guess). Was there any evidence-based or theoretical reason for this number? No, it was just in between so it seemed moderate. That's like a student taking a Math test, looking at the papers of the kids on either side of him and seeing two different answers, and averaging them for his own answer.

So now we have an economy saved from disaster by the stimulus and bank bailouts, but with unemployment still stuck in the mud and likely to be stuck there for years because the stimulus wasn't big enough. That's the kind of moderation- vapid, simplistic- that we don't need.

George W Bush did not moderate his call for tax cuts in 2001-2002. The political strategists were smart: they asked for a whole loaf and a half, and got 90% of the loaf in the end. Obama's just asking for half, and getting a quarter. The Democrats have to be smarter and tougher than Evan Bayh if they want to stay in power and get anything done.


One problem with blogging is that everything one writes has been written before- it's plagiarism central. Check out this: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_tyranny_of_the_centrists for a year-old version of this same point.

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid (Posted by AS)

While everyone who is not on the far-Right sleeps, the Tea Party movement is growing stronger and stronger.

If you consider yourself a moderate, or a centrist, either on the Republican or Demcratic side, you should be very concerned. Even my fellow Massachusetts residents who voted for Scott Brown should be aware that he is being scrutinized very closely. Senator Brown could easily find himself a target of the Tea Partiers. Even that GOP stalwart, John McCain, is facing a serious primary challenge this year.

I encourage you to read this article and keep yourselves informed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/us/politics/16teaparty.html?nl=us&emc=politicsemailemb1

Crossroads (Posted by AS)

"I went down to the crossroads, fell down on my knees;
Down to the crossroads, fell down on my knees;
Asked the Lord above for mercy, save me if you please."
(with apologies to Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce AND Robert Johnson)

Every boy on Long Island (and lots of other places too) born between, say, 1960 and 1972, probably knows the classic blues song Crossroads as done by Cream. Maybe it was even one of the sources of inspiration for the ever-present inscription "Clapton is God" on numerous high school walls.

However, as I look around today and try to come to grips with the world as it exists here in 2010, this iconic song generates a different, and much more serious, resonance. Our great nation truly is at a crossroads. The path that our country takes in the critical months ahead before the midterm elections, either by design, fate, or a combination of both, will have a profound effect on our collective future and our ability to navigate even more distant crossroads.

Between now and November, I look forward to bringing you my perspective on these pressing issues of national and international politics. I welcome comment and criticism, whether constructive or contrarian. I am deeply concerned with the direction that political discussion sometimes takes. Too often, even people who follow political issues on a regular basis are distracted by style over substance. Too often, the voices that yell the loudest are the ones that prevail. Too often, people are so focused on their own very local or personal concerns that they fail to see the proverbial forest for the trees.

Of course, in this day and age, there are so many sources of information, so many different ways people express themselves on a variety of topics. It has often been said that "opinions are like assholes, everybody's got one." However, I also firmly believe in the truism expressed by another quotation, one from the great Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis: "Sunlight is the best disinfectant." I hope that my opinion, as expressed in this blog, helps shed some sunlight on some ideas for a few of you and gets you thinking and talking.

We are truly at a critical juncture. Those on the far right want us to go take one road. Those on the far left want us to take another. I believe that there is yet another road that our country needs to take. I hope that my upcoming blogposts help convince you that we should take that other road, so that we can continue to make progress and fulfill the promise of our nation.

Otherwise, we'll just keep standin' at the crossroads, and I believe we'll be sinkin' down.

Reader Response to National Health Care post

Posted by DT
A reader responded:

What if, however, I don't agree that the #1 problem that needs to be fixed
is insuring everyone? Maybe I believe that the #1 problem that needs to be fixed
is to make it more affordable. Once that's accomplished, maybe we can increase
coverage. But to pile more people onto a sinking ship is counter-productive --
first the ship needs to be fixed or a new one built that can hold
everyone...

What do you think, has the Mass. plan been successful? Do
you think mandatory coverage has contributed to Mass. debt which is causing the
government to lay people off and force furlow and limit money paid out to the
towns for services? Obviously the economy is in the dumps so it's hard to
pin down all the factors, but is it reasonable to believe that this might be one
factor?

If you don't agree that a goal in the US should be to insure everyone, I'm not sure we have much common ground. One way to make health insurance more affordable to to cover everyone. Why? Because you increase the risk pool, capturing many young and healthy people whom you need in order to balance out the older, sicker people who cost so much money. But to expand this to a moral argument: isn't the task of government to solve problems? Every other First World country has figured out how to insure everyone, and it's working to varying degrees in each place. There is no movement anywhere to go back to a "you're on your own" system. It's just better for the citizenry. There's a current of thought running through the US polity that we government is completely unable to solve any problems, but it's just not true- our government may not be able to produce consumer goods efficiently, but there are lots of things it can and should be doing.

As to the second point, I'm not aware of any evidence that Massachusetts' insurance plan has been a major factor in its budget problems. For one thing the problems there are no worse than in other states. Financing was unproblematic until the economic crash. In fact the health care industry is one of the relative bright spots in the state. Like any program run by the government, health care subsidization for the poor is going to lead to budget challenges- like other challenges, it can be handled.

The Health Care Debate: Just the Facts (posted by DT)

In recent correspondence, some of my commenters have complained that my tone is too dismissive, too one-sided, and therefore can not succeed in winning anyone over, or that it doesn’t focus on “solving problems”, just bashing the opposition. So in that spirit I want to lay out my understanding of the health care debate in Washington, with a goal of swaying those of you who are against “Obamacare”.

Problem: The health care system in the US is broken. It is estimated that 40 million people (15% of the country) don’t have health insurance. A Harvard School of Public Health study says that 45,000 people die each year because of lack of access to health care services. That’s way more people than have died in all terrorist attacks against the US- ever. For those of us who do have health insurance, we are at risk to lose it at any time if we lose our job or if our insurance company decides to cancel it due to an expensive medical condition. If you own a small business and buy your own health insurance, and a family member gets cancer, your insurance carrier can cancel your policy before they have to pay for all the treatments. At the same time, the US spends more money than anyone else on health care for no better results. Business Week compares the US to France:

France also demonstrates that you can deliver stellar results with this mix
of public and private financing. In a recent World Health Organization
health-careranking, France came in first, while the U.S. scored 37th, slightly
better than Cuba and one notch above Slovenia. France's infant death rate is 3.9
per 1,000 live births, compared with 7 in the U.S., and average life expectancy
is 79.4 years, two years more than in the U.S. The country has far more hospital
beds and doctors per capita than America, and far lower rates of death from
diabetes and heart disease. The difference in deaths from respiratory disease, an
often preventable form of mortality, is particularly striking: 31.2 per 100,000
people in France, vs. 61.5 per 100,000 in the U.S.…And France spends just 10.7%
of its gross domestic product on health care, while the U.S. lays out 16%, more
than any other nation.

So we’re paying more and getting less, and the uninsured are getting WAY less. So what’s the solution? There are many possible solutions to the health care dilemma. I’ll lay them out from the Left of the political spectrum to the Right:

Socialized Medicine: This is the system in the UK. The government is in charge of the whole system. They pay the doctors and own the hospitals. Basically the health system is treated like we treat the post office in the US. The VA health system in the US is socialized. This is not being considered by anyone in the more general US health care debate. Any reference to “socialized medicine” by critics of Obamacare is hyperbole and should be treated as such.

Single Payor: This is the system in Canada. Doctors and hospitals can be private, but payment all comes from one source- the government. Medicare in the US is single payor, for Senior citizens and the Disabled only. This is the solution favored by the American Left. It is deemed “radical” in the media, though I would point out that our closest neighbor already has it. My Canadian-born friends tell me that this system stinks, by the way, and they prefer the current US system (they all have health insurance). Single Payor is not under consideration in the current debate in the US, though there was a brief hope for the Left when the Senate proposed allowing people over 50 to join Medicare if they paid in. This was scuttled at the last minute in the Senate bill when Joe Lieberman changed his earlier position of support for reasons that are unclear.

“Obamacare”: This term is a misnomer, in that the plans passed by the House and Senate were led by Congress. Obama’s lack of leadership has been striking; I think he feared that the debacle of the Clinton initiative was due to Congress being left out of the process and so he has overcompensated in the other direction. The bills passed by the House and Senate are similar, and I won’t go through the differences here. The legislation rests on three connected concepts:

1. Insurance companies can not be permitted to deny insurance to anyone based on their pre-existing condition, and must cover all people who apply.
2. Given #1, everyone must be mandated to have health insurance, just as people in most states are mandated to have auto insurance to drive a car. If this principle is left out, healthy/young people would just stay out of the health insurance market and join only after they get sick. Insurance would cover too many sick people and would become unaffordable.
3. Given #2 and the high cost of health insurance, the government must subsidize poor people so that they can afford insurance. We can’t mandate insurance to people who can’t afford it.

Alternative plans that want to do #1 only won’t work for the reason denoted in #2. This plan does not change the insurance market, and does not require any change for those who currently have insurance. #3 will cost money and must be funded by taxes somewhere- plans to do this differ in the House and Senate bills. Cost savings are also part of this bill, through mandating efficiencies in Medicare by pushing harder to fund scientifically-based medicine and de-fund treatments that are not proven to work. Both bills are scored by the CBO as deficit-neutral, in that they pay for themselves through the Medicare efficiencies and tax revenues. The bills would in fact decrease the federal deficit (remember that Medicare & Medicaid are the biggest budget-busters at the federal level).

Market-Based Solutions: The Right has been working on ideas making the health care field more market-based, in order to increase efficiency and control costs. It has been suggested that tax breaks for employer-paid insurance has tilted the market and led to a situation in which consumers are too separated from the cost of the products. Since we don’t know or care how much an MRI costs, and our doctor doesn’t know or care, the doctor suggests using it and we say “sure” when we may not really need it. Or we might take a really expensive medication when a cheaper, older one would be just as good, but since we don’t consider cost we don’t make the efficient choice. There’s no question in my mind that making costs less opaque would help cut costs and increase efficiency. What it wouldn’t do is cover the uninsured. That can’t be done without revenue from somewhere or bigger deficits, both of which are seen as unacceptable on the Right at this time. So market-based solutions would be an improvement over the current situation but would not solve the problem as defined at the top of this post.

Tort Reform: There’s always talk of putting caps on jury findings so that doctors would practice less “defensive medicine” and be less afraid of lawsuits. This would have a miniscule effect on health costs and would do nothing to cover the uninsured. It may not be a bad idea, mind you, but it won’t solve the problem.

The New Republican Plan: Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin has put forward a plan for health insurance reform that finally gets specific about what a Republican plan would look like. I think it’s fair to criticize the Right in the US of carping from the sidelines without offering their own plan, but Rep. Ryan has now filled the void. He proposes taxing employer health plans, issuing tax credits, and expanding health savings accounts. The proposal encourages states to establish exchanges to purchase health insurance and also proposes that states regulate insurers to make sure they are not dropping people who get sick. The plan would still allow insurers to charge higher rates to sicker people, and along with much lower subsidies for the poor than in Democratic plans, millions of people would remain uninsured (there’s no individual mandate). Rep. Ryan also has a recent proposal to slow the growth of Medicare by giving Seniors vouchers toward their health insurance instead- these vouchers would grow at a slower rate than past medical inflation. This would indeed lower the costs of Medicare, but would also ration care for Seniors- poor people would eventually be unable to afford to purchase insurance even with their vouchers.

I think it’s clear that the plans of the Right would not solve the problems of our health insurance system. That’s not to say they have no value, just that they make change around the edges while continuing to allow tens of thousands of Americans to needlessly die every year due to lack of affordable health care.

The most common criticism of liberal health care reform is that “we can’t afford it”. Every other country in the developed world ensures full medical coverage for their citizens. None of them has fallen apart and citizens in them are not clamoring for US-style health care. The employer-based coverage system is itself inefficient and is a drag on economic innovation- I might want to stop working for my big company and start a business on my own, but I would be discouraged by inability to get health care for my family. If the reason we can’t afford it is because increased taxes are never acceptable, then I guess, yeah, we can’t afford it. But you don’t get something for nothing- my town voted to raise taxes last month to fund a new Middle School, because it’s a worthy use of our money. So is health care.

Look, I believe that the free market is the best way to produce a better flat screen TV. I don’t want any government meddling in that market, except to inspect enough to make sure that it won’t explode in my living room and burn down my house. Some things, however, are better provided by non-profit or government forces. We want government providing police and fire departments, fixing roads, running our military, inspecting food, educating our children, running child protective services, managing our money supply, etc. etc. etc. One of the things government should be doing in the 21st century is making sure that everyone has basic medical care.