Ezra Klein Rewrites the History of Health Reform

posted at 2:00 pm on February 2, 2011 by John Sexton
[ Healthcare ]   

Ezra Klein must be frustrated. The health reform law he has tirelessly championed is still not popular with the public and was just declared unconstitutional by a federal court yesterday. What’s a wonk to do? Blame the heartless Republican of course:

It’s easy to compromise when both sides are committed to solving a problem, because the appeal of solving the the problem is enough to persuade both sides to make concessions. That’s why Democrats gave up on single payer, on an employer mandate, on a public option. But it’s impossible to compromise when one side is uninterested in solving the problem, as they lack the incentive to make any concessions. That’s where the Republicans are on this, and it’s why they’ve not been interested in joining onto a bill even when Bill Clinton moved to the right and adopted the core of Richard Nixon’s plan and Barack Obama moved even further to the right and adopted the core of Mitt Romney and Bob Dole’s plan.

It may be comforting for Klein to sit back and his party has been the soul of reason in this debate but it’s not true. Democrats didn’t move right in an effort to compromise with Republicans. Are you kidding me? Sherrod Brown moved right? Russ Feingold moved right? Jan Schakowsky moved right? No. No. And hell no!

Democrats decided prior to the election that they wanted a two-step plan that would eventually get them to the single-payer system they really wanted. It had to be a two-step plan because single-payer is wildly unpopular with the public. So Jacob Hacker was brought in to design a plan which one could “claim” was free market (the President’s mantra was “choice and competition”) even as it inevitably destroyed the private insurance market over time.

Democrats didn’t move to the right out of a noble desire to solve a problem. They made a “sneaky” strategic decision, a head fake, to the center because they understood that “at some point you have to win.” Ezra Klein understands that perfectly well, because those are his words describing the Democratic plan of attack.

The President understands it too. He is on record as a supporter of single-payer. He is also on record stating that his plan was meant to be a “transitional system.” More recently he explained to Jon Stewart that health reform, like Social Security, is just a framework that can grow in size and scope over time.

Democrats played a cynical game with health reform and, so far, they’ve lost. Reform has not become more popular over time, but less. Two judges have now ruled the funding mechanism unconstitutional. Republicans have taken the House and gained seats in the Senate in part because of the unpopularity of the two year long push for reform (which made unemployment a back-burner issue).

The bottom line is this: It was the Democrats’ ends-justify-the-means approach to reform that brought us to this point, not their desire to compromise. Klein is right about one thing though. Republicans lack any incentive to make concessions on an unpopular plan which will create a massive new entitlement we can ill afford right now. Thank goodness for that.

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