Healthcare Reform Revisited

Again I generally want to see the healthcare bill pass, but I can't deny there are a lot of problems with it, particularly the Senate Christmas Bill. Bob Herbert highlights some of these problems in his latest article.

Within three years of its implementation, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the tax would apply to nearly 20 percent of all workers with employer-provided health coverage in the country, affecting some 31 million people. Within six years, according to Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation, the tax would reach a fifth of all households earning between $50,000 and $75,000 annually. Those families can hardly be considered very wealthy.

Proponents say the tax will raise nearly $150 billion over 10 years, but there’s a catch. It’s not expected to raise this money directly. The dirty little secret behind this onerous tax is that no one expects very many people to pay it. The idea is that rather than fork over 40 percent in taxes on the amount by which policies exceed the threshold, employers (and individuals who purchase health insurance on their own) will have little choice but to ratchet down the quality of their health plans.

These lower-value plans would have higher out-of-pocket costs, thus increasing the very things that are so maddening to so many policyholders right now: higher and higher co-payments, soaring deductibles and so forth. Some of the benefits of higher-end policies can be expected in many cases to go by the boards: dental and vision care, for example, and expensive mental health coverage.

Proponents say this is a terrific way to hold down health care costs. If policyholders have to pay more out of their own pockets, they will be more careful — that is to say, more reluctant — to access health services. On the other hand, people with very serious illnesses will be saddled with much higher out-of-pocket costs. And a reluctance to seek treatment for something that might seem relatively minor at first could well have terrible (and terribly expensive) consequences in the long run.

It is pretty troubling to consider. I hope that some elements of this draconian plan can be smoothed out in committee or over the next few years.

The Investor Tax

Bob Herbert's latest article is inconsistent but contains the germ of a good idea. Specifically he proposes placing a small tax the buying and selling of investments.

The economist Dean Baker is a strong advocate of a financial transactions tax. This would impose a small fee — ranging up to, say, 0.25 percent — on the sale or transfer of stocks, bonds and other financial assets, including the seemingly endless variety of exotic financial instruments that have been in the news so much lately.

According to Mr. Baker, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, the fees would raise a ton of money, perhaps $100 billion or more annually — money that the government sorely needs.

But there’s another intriguing element to the proposal. While the fees would be a trivial expense for what the general public tends to think of as ordinary traders — people investing in stocks, bonds or other assets for some reasonable period of time — they would amount to a much heavier lift for speculators, the folks who bring a manic quality to the markets, who treat it like a casino.

Not a bad idea, but Herbert chooses to spend more time explaining to us (as if we didn't already know) that we have large deficits and aren't likely to slow our spending in the near future, than going over the details of how this plan would work. Still not a bad idea all in all.

Nader - what else can you say?

Bob Herberts latest article over at the Times is about Nader once again throwing his hat in the ring. It's a pretty good one; respectful of the guys accomplishments while pointing out that his continual runs hurt the very issues he cares about.

And while he will deny with every bit of energy he can muster (like a man protesting too much) that he was responsible for tossing the presidential election to George W. Bush in 2000, it’s very difficult to make the case that the end result wouldn’t have been different if Mr. Nader had not run.

It would have been impossible to believe during his heyday that Ralph Nader could be despised by many Democrats and progressives, that he would become a target of their ridicule and vitriol. He is now widely viewed as a hapless perennial candidate with no political upside and the ever-present potential of throwing an election the wrong way.

. . . The conventional wisdom is that Mr. Nader’s candidacy won’t have much of an effect this year. But conventional wisdom has already been turned on its head repeatedly in this campaign.

I have to second all that. Nader has the right to run, of course. But I have the right to disapprove of his run. And I do.

The Volunteer Army

Bob Herbert, over at the New York Times, tackles the question of Army Recruitment, and what continued failure might mean.

The all-volunteer Army is fine in peacetime, and in military routs like the first gulf war. But when the troops are locked in a prolonged war that yields high casualties, and they look over their shoulders to see if reinforcements are coming from the general population, they find -as they're finding now - that no one is there.

The article is a little scary in its implications. Maybe President Bush should have thought a little bit more before fixing the data to support a case for invading Iraq.

More on Jayson Blair

From the New York Times Columnist Bob Herbert.

Mr. Blair was a first-class head case who was given a golden opportunity and responded by spreading seeds of betrayal every place he went. He betrayed his readers. He betrayed his profession. He betrayed the editors who hired and promoted him. But there was no racial component to that betrayal, any more than there was a racial component to the many betrayals of Mike Barnicle, a columnist who was forced to resign from The Boston Globe in 1998 after years of complaints about his work.

Although Mr. Barnicle is white, his journalistic sins have generally — and properly — been seen as the sins of an individual.

But the folks who delight in attacking anything black, or anything designed to help blacks, have pounced on the Blair story as evidence that there is something inherently wrong with The Times's effort to diversify its newsroom, and beyond that, with the very idea of a commitment to diversity or affirmative action anywhere.

And while these agitators won't admit it, the nasty subtext to their attack is that there is something inherently wrong with blacks. . . .

A black reporter told me angrily last week, "After hundreds of years in America, we are still on probation."

The Role of the United Nations

Article today by Bob Herbert at the New York Times talking about what role the UN should play. He disagrees with the administrations plan to use the Military to disburse aid, and their excessive control over relief organizations. Perhaps President Bush and his administration would like to ensure that the United States receives credit for their compassion on the Iraqi people, this program could have disastrous unintended consequences.

Herbert quotes Charles MacCormack, president of Save the Children, as saying, "The single most important issue here is let the humanitarian side of the government and nongovernmental world handle the humanitarian response, and let the military handle the military response. If it's seen as one joined-at-the-hip operation, military and humanitarian, then humanitarian workers all over the world will be at risk of their lives because they'll be seen as partisan." Hopefully the administration will avoid this particular pitfall as the weeks unfold. It may require a thawing of relations between the United States and the United Nations, as the UN is the most logical group to administer the relief efforts.