Conservative health-care-policy ideas reside in an uncertain state of quasi-existence. You can describe the policies in the abstract, sometimes even in detail, but any attempt to reproduce them in physical form will cause such proposals to disappear instantly. It’s not so much an issue of “hypocrisy,” as Klein frames it, as a deeper metaphysical question of whether conservative health-care policies actually exist.
The question should be posed to better-trained philosophical minds than my own. I would posit that conservative health-care policies do not exist in any real form. Call it the “Heritage Uncertainty Principle.”
Part of the reason this made me laugh is that in The Book (current working title: Rethinking Religion: Being Religious in a Modern, Tolerant, Progressive, Peaceful and Science-affirming World) there’s a chapter titled “God and Existence” that contains variations on the theme of the nature of existence, drawing on science and philosophy, to argue that “existence” is mostly indefinable, and depending on how it is defined anything could be said to either exist or not exist. The point in context of The Book is that it’s really stupid to argue about whether God exists, even assuming we had any idea what God is. But the Republican health care plan is a good example, too.
Chait’s theme is that Republican health care plans going back to the beginning of the Clinton Administration are ephemeral things that “exist” as thought-objects only as long as there’s no plan to implement them. For example,
In 1993, Republican minority leader Bob Dole supported a version of it to demonstrate that Republicans did not endorse the status quo, until Democrats, facing the demise of their own plan, tried to bring up Dole’s plan, at which point Dole renounced his own plan.
Mitt Romney, clearly too thick to understand how the game is played, screwed the pooch by putting an actual conservative health care plan into effect in Massachusetts. The Republican response has been to hang what was mostly a Heritage/Romney plan around the neck of President Obama and call it socialized medicine. The wonder is that, years ago anyway, Heritage came up with a plan that was do-able in the real world, even if clumsy. I doubt Heritage will make that mistake again. Or could if they tried.
Brian Beutler points out that current Republican “plans” on the “table” suffer from the same weaknesses they perceive in Obamacare.
The cornerstone of nearly every conservative health care reform plan is to eliminate or dramatically reduce the tax preference for employer-sponsored health insurance and use the revenues to help people pay for their own coverage. But the disruptions that would entail would dwarf the ones Obamacare is creating, and conservative wonks realized that by opportunistically attacking Obamacare, political operatives had just crafted the very attacks that could ultimately doom their own policymaking pursuits. …
…Two weeks ago a trio of Republican senators introduced a plan to replace Obamacare. Conservatives everywhere, including Ponnuru and his National Review colleagues, applauded it. But its authors will seemingly have to choose between actually financing it or inviting the same severe market disruptions the GOP is now on record opposing. The plan itself called, somewhat confusingly, for “cap[ping] the tax exclusion for employee’s health coverage at 65 percent of an average plan’s costs.” Yuval Levin surmised reasonably that they meant capping it at the 65th percentile of employer plans. But either way its authors became caught in the trap their own party set for them in the fall. When questions started rolling in about market disruptions, they made a dramatic change to their white paper. The cap would now be set, vaguely, at “65 percent of the average market price for an expensive high-option plan,” presumably at the expense of revenues required to finance the plan’s coverage goals.
The plan is just a prop, anyway. It’s a means to allow the Wall Street Journal editorial page to run headlines that Republicans have a better way to fix health care. It’s like the stacks of paper they were carting around when the ACA was being voted on in Congress; they’d hold their stacks of paper up at press conferences and say, see? We have a health care plan, too. But the paper was just a prop. Even after the ACA was passed and the GOP started talking about “repeal and replace,” they still didn’t have a “replace.”
Hmm…
Sounds like ‘Schrödinger’s Health Care Plan.’
See “Schrödinger’s Cat” for a reference, if you’re not familiar with this quantum mechanics thought experiment:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat
Two weeks ago a trio of Republican senators introduced a plan to replace Obamacare
That sentence made my blood run cold. (And for some reason, made me picture the witches from “Macbeth.”)
Random thought: If the meek inherit the earth, what will the lying bloviators of the Heritage Foundation inherit? They chose the name, after all. So far, their “heritage” has been the ruin of democracy and a reasonably healthy economy.
If they’re into Taosim, they could also cite the Tao Te Ching: No doing, yet nothing left undone.
Although really it ultimately comes down to the same thing as Republican economic “policy”, and pretty much all policies: Then a miracle occurs.
And this is the other image I always think of. Only in the Republican policy manual the remedy for every conceivable issue is tax cuts and deregulation.
The fact that the Heritage/Romney plan works far better than what we had (though not nearly so well as what we should continue to strive for) is proof of the Overton Window concept. The right wing wouldn’t have come up with it unless there were serious threats to do something more left wing (and ultimately better).
Same reason the idea of pushing expansion of Social Security, Medicare for all, and guaranteed income is good. Even if we can’t make them happen, the weaker plans brought in to try to prevent them will be better than just constantly building dikes to prevent erosion, which has too often been the left wing approach in recent years.
Give ’em the old razzle dazzle
Razzle Dazzle ’em
Give ’em an act with lots of flash in it
And the reaction will be passionate
Give ’em the old hocus pocus
Bead and feather ’em
How can they see with sequins in their eyes?
What if your hinges all are rusting?
What if, in fact, you’re just disgusting?
Razzle dazzle ’em
And they;ll never catch wise!
Read more: Chicago The Musical – Razzle Dazzle Lyrics | MetroLyrics
The shining city upon the hill only shines from a distance.
Off Topic – What Hassert Rule?
The House passed a ‘clean’ debt limit bill – supported by all but 2 democrats, and approved by only 28 republicans. Boehner gave House republicans the finger, denying the Tea Party the chance to play chicken with the debt ceiling and drive down GOP popularity in an election year. Smart politics by Boehner to protect the House majority, but will he pay for it with his gavel? If so, will the House GOP select a radical for Speaker?
“The plan is just a prop, anyway”
You got that right, everything the republicants do is a prop, they are not serious about one thing. Boehner can’t even get telling the tebaggers to fuck off right. Today he basically told them to pound sand by bring the debt ceiling to floor clean, but had some half-baked bullshit rambling about giving President Obama “his” debt ceiling? Boehner and the whole DC republicant party is a fucking joke. They can’t even obstruct effectively anymore, hahahahaha!!!! And Sir-Cumference was supposed to be the savior, this whole bridge-gate has exposed him a political amateur, with a minor league team of lightweights, he can’t even pull off a second rate influence peddling strong-arm operation, Nixon would be ashamed!
Am I understanding this correctly? They want en mployers to only have to pay 65% of what insurance costs? If so I would like to point out that this cost is part of a emploees pay package and ifthey intend to present such a plan they are cutting workers pay..not once but twice. Once by taking away a benefit and a second time by requiring the employee to make up the difference.
If so, will the House GOP select a radical for Speaker?
I think Eric Cantor has already been given the anointing.. He’s the heir apparent.
The point in context of The Book is that it’s really stupid to argue about whether God exists, even assuming we had any idea what God is.
Well, God exists as a figment of the imagination. And as evidence of that fact is the fact that we’re spelling god with a capital G.
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/luxury-ceo-poor-should-stop-whining-n28616
Here’s some conservative logic some of you commenter might want wrestle with. By this logic if I compare myself to a garden slug I would be brilliant. QED.
Swami – “Well, God exists as a figment of the imagination.”
I think you are almost right. God exists as something bigger than I can imagine. The chief failure of most religions is that they try to specifically and precisely quantify ‘God’. A few religions avoid this trap with multiple deities which the religion admits are convenient inventions to describe a facet of ‘God’, not the final, true description of God. People who claim to have a ‘personal relationship’ with God, IMO have a personal relationship with their own subconscious. I used to feel compelled to prove this until I realized the delusion is usually healthy – the ‘god’ in their head was almost always prodding them to be a better person. Why should I talk them out of it?
“…until I realized the delusion is usually healthy – the ‘god’ in their head was almost always prodding them to be a better person. ”
Except the ever-so-many pseudoChristians whose ‘personal relationship’ with God consists of what they are told by their politically-motivated religious leader or talk show host (or both).
What Dan said!!!!!!!!!
The puppet masters would like to define the narrative in this way :
“All liberals hate Christianity and Christians and want to replace your religion with a secular tyranny which will forbid freedom of religion.”
I don’t know anyone on this blog who fits that definition. I won’t make statements which in context or out of context will feed that narrative. I don’t care what you believe or how you practice your religion until you inflict the precepts of your religion on society. The left has done a piss-poor job of supporting freedom of religion with the caveat that personal faith is not something you try to impose through the government on others. The right has been largely successful in laying a label on us that we are hostile to religion.