SICKOS

2/15/09

The political ineptitude of the Democratic Party never ceases to amaze even the most casual observer of politics. (Singling out the Democratic Party in this instance does not exonerate the Republicans, who are every bit as inept as the Democrats. However, the particular instance of political pococurantism I am addressing here is unique to the Democrats.)

For at least the last thirty years, more like sixty, really, one of the most fervid goals of the Democratic Party, and certainly of its leftmost quarters, has been a system of national health care, most ideally, in the Party’s most febrile dreams, delivered through a one-payer system. This idea has been a non-starter for the same reason that school vouchers, a long held goal of the more libertarian quarters of the Republican right, have been a non-starter (But vouchers are grist for another mill.): most people, and certainly most people who vote, are happy with their health care insurance arrangements. These voters get very generous (They don’t realize how generous their plans are; I advise anyone getting his or her health care through a major employer to get out there and buy his own individual health care policy if he cares to complain about the premia he pays or what an injustice it is to have to pay, say, $10 for a prescription, or a $50 co-pay for a hangnail examination, but I digress.) health insurance through their employers and are happy to have even the most routine and unnecessary procedures covered through what is laughingly called “insurance” but what would be called, if accuracy were the object, prepaid health care arrangements. Why would such people support national health care?

The only hope the Democrats have of realizing their dream of a one-payer national health care scheme is for the voting public, the working middle class, to become unhappy with their health care arrangements. And, with unemployment reaching double digits, the party of Kucinich was on the verge of achieving this goal. With people losing their jobs and suddenly finding that they would have to say, take a little Brioschi rather than run to the doctor to get some widely and very expensively advertised remedy for “acid reflux disease” prescribed for the cost of a $5.00 co-pay, there would indeed be hell to pay. The middle class would demand that politicians “do something” in the form of handing out other people’s money so that people could continue the practice of overconsuming “health care” at a rate that makes the rest of the world either shake its collective head or heap scorn on us Americans who have made the back of the local Walgreen’s busier than your typical McDonald’s at lunch time.

But what do the Democrats do? As part of their stimulus bill, they insert a provision subsidizing COBRA payments for those left unemployed by the economic and financial chickens come home to roost that is described as a national crisis. Now people are not only entitled to continue their employer provided health care coverage while unemployed but no longer have to pick up the whole tab for such coverage. So people have one less reason to be dissatisfied with the current absurdity of a health care system in which one’s access to health insurance depends on one’s employment status.

Don’t misunderstand me; I am not arguing for national health care (as if loyal readers had to be told that!). While our system of employer provided coverage defies economic logic and humanitarian principles and badly needs rethinking, my libertarian instincts tell me that nationalized health care is not the answer. I am only arguing pure, Machiavellian politics. The Democrats had a chance to let the system generate its own discontent, and thus provide an opening for one of their most heartfelt goals, and they blew it.

Some will respond in high dudgeon: “The Democrats are not motivated by such sordid concerns as Machiavellian politics. They are concerned with the plight of the newly unemployed, and if sacrificing one of their longest held goals is necessary to help these people, the big-hearted Democrats surely will.” I, however, stopped believing in the tooth fairy when Kennedy was president.