Health Care Debate: Krugman lluminates – Obama, Not So Much

by John Lindsey

Paul Krugman has an interesting piece bringing health care systems around the world into better perspective vis-a-vis US health care. The bills in congress are basically taking us in the Swiss direction; which isn’t the best, but would be significantly better and less expensive than ours.

Better, of course, unless the public option gets cut out of the final bill; rendering the whole thing a wasted effort or worse. No cost control means no reform.

Asked about a column by long-time Democratic strategist Paul Begala, urging progressives not to shy away from tackling health care in a more incremental approach, [Howard] Dean shot back: “The public option is incrementalism…. But there is no incrementalism without the public option.” He explained: “If you don’t have a public option this bill is not even incremental, in terms of adequate health care reform… Paul is not entirely wrong. It is just that the last shred of reform is the public option.”

Obama, unfortunately, doesn’t seem to be able to keep his story straight.

Anyway, Krugman:

So where does Obamacare fit into all this? Basically, it’s a plan to Swissify America, using regulation and subsidies to ensure universal coverage.

If we were starting from scratch we probably wouldn’t have chosen this route. True “socialized medicine” would undoubtedly cost less, and a straightforward extension of Medicare-type coverage to all Americans would probably be cheaper than a Swiss-style system. That’s why I and others believe that a true public option competing with private insurers is extremely important: otherwise, rising costs could all too easily undermine the whole effort.