Shrill

Ron Brownstein seems really mad that Bush is blocking this S-CHIP expansion. I'll even defend Bush a little. Brownstein writes that Bush is "portraying it as the first step on a slippery slope toward 'government-run healthcare,' as if senior senators in both parties were conspiring with Michael Moore to import Cuban doctors to inoculate and indoctrinate American children," which seems to harsh.

Bush, more realistically, is just worried that expanding S-CHIP will make the country a much better place, and build political support for further expansions of S-CHIP and similar programs. He's worried that people won't think it's just bad for kids under 18 to have no health insurance, but probably bad for young adults, middle aged people, and, indeed, everyone.

Comments

Right -- it's very harsh for Brownstein to put Bush in the same sentence with a crazy leftwinger like Michael Moore, whose argument about US health care is . . . not at all controversial.

Posted by mary | August 1, 2007 6:14 PM

Your line of logic would suggest that we went to the war in Iraq because Bush was afraid that continued leadership of Saddam would keep Iraq free from Al Queda and would keep the sectarian strife under control.

Posted by gregor | August 1, 2007 6:16 PM

You're right that it's unfair of Brownstein to criticize Bush for claiming that S-CIp expansion is a first step toward some kind of single-payer system since in fact it might very well be.

Actually I'm not sure if that is your point, but if not, it should be.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | August 1, 2007 6:19 PM

Personally, my concern over S-CHIP expansion could lead to M-CHIP expansion, and what the hell is M-CHIP? I don't know, but the 'M' could well stand for 'Micro', and I, for one, don't think people should be implanted with microchips.

Posted by strannix | August 1, 2007 6:27 PM

Was the Atlantic bought by Murdoch too? MY, you're sounding a bit "fair and balanced" today. Did someone slip you a Rupie?

Posted by Gregorio | August 1, 2007 6:31 PM

Bush is a believer in the free market, and knows that absent strong economic incentives to stay well, kids will get sick . . .

Posted by rea | August 1, 2007 6:46 PM

"I'll even defend Bush a little."
Bucking for an Yglesias award, aren't you?

Posted by Barry | August 1, 2007 6:47 PM

Gregorio:
He's under the influence of The Great Orange Satan.

Posted by Joe Klein's conscience | August 1, 2007 7:10 PM

Who? Jennifer Aniston? Lindsay Lohan? I hear that, I just think Spray-tan.

Posted by Gregorio | August 1, 2007 7:18 PM

Bizarrely, PhRMA is running pro-S-CHIP ads, while the Big Insurance astroturfers are running ads against the tightening of private insurance subsidies (so-called 'Medicare Advantage') that's part of the S-CHIP expansion bill.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | August 1, 2007 7:34 PM

Come on now, he's not defending Bush at all. If Bush really thought S-CHIP was going to lead to socialized medicine, then he'd have a sort of ideological justification for rejecting it. Instead, MY says the situation is far worse: Bush just doesn't give a crap about the citizens in this country. Especially when the help they need might be provided by a program that contradicts that grand Republican vision of the uselessness of all government programs. It is one thing to reject legislation because you think it would be bad for the country. It's another thing to do so because you think that its benefit to the country is inversely proportional to its benefit to your party. Denying healthcare to children for political reasons? Sounds conservative to me.

Posted by Gordon Lightfoot | August 1, 2007 7:49 PM

You guys jumping on Matt's case are kind of missing the point here. He's being ironic, or perhaps damning Bush with faint praise. Was this really too subtle?

I think he's got a good point. To a conservative Republican like Bush, the scariest thing in the world is a successful (non-military) government program. People are supposed to be afraid that the government will screw everything up (except for wars!). "Government run health care" is supposed to be self evidently a bad idea because we should assume that the government won't do as good of a job as the "market". Whenever this idea is proved wrong, well, then people start to suppose that the government could improve their lives in other ways and that, of course, leads to Stalinism. (Note to those slow on the uptake. That was sarcasm.)

Anyway, in this case, Bush rightly realizes that expanding a successful government health program will cause more people to realize that a universal healthcare program might not be such a bad idea. There's no conspiracy to this effect, but Bush is correct that this will be the result.

Posted by Rob Mac | August 1, 2007 7:55 PM

**Nobody** needs health insurance.

Insurance is what you take out for uncertainties. There is no uncertainty here: it is certain that everybody needs health care.

Everybody has a body. Thus there is nothing unsure to insure. There is no doubt. There is no moral risk. There is nothing to be spread around. There is a universal condition which logically ought to be shared universally.

Health care in Canada costs roughly 9~10% of GDP. The US spends over 16% -- and Americans die younger than Canadians. This seems to make it clear that America is paying the insurance companies roughly 5% of GDP for carrying out the ugly little job not of providing health care but of deciding who *doesn't* get health care.

This seems rather a lot to pay for denial, not provision, of needed services.

Posted by David Lloyd-Jones | August 1, 2007 7:59 PM

Re: Bucking for an Yglesias award, aren't you?

I don't think Andrew Sullivan gives them out these days to people who begin with "I'll even defend Bush a little.". He's about as unhinged on the subject of George Bush these days as your average Kossack.

Re: If Bush really thought S-CHIP was going to lead to socialized medicine, then he'd have a sort of ideological justification for rejecting it.

Who knows what Bush thinks? That's one mind I'd rather never read. But I'll bet money that the inmusrance Agency is pulling the puppet strings on this one, and that's exactly what they fear, not only that they could lose middle class children as (healthy) suscribers under their parents' policies but that in the long run universal healthcare for kids will lead to universal healthcare for adults and not through them.

Posted by JonF | August 1, 2007 8:24 PM

Right, I agree that Bush's motives are in all likelihood utterly incomprehensible to the rational man, and that it is ultimately interest group politics guiding his strike anyway. Programs like S-CHIP won't likely lead to state-run hospitals, but they could lead to the disintegration of the insurance industry. Of course, I wouldn't shed too many tears over that. It seems not entirely implausible that the function they perform for profit can more efficiently and humanely be performed by the government, without the peculiar economic incentive of screwing one's policyholders for the sake of the bottom line.

Posted by Gordon Lightfoot | August 2, 2007 12:51 AM

"Health care in Canada costs roughly 9~10% of GDP. The US spends over 16% -- and Americans die younger than Canadians. This seems to make it clear that America is paying the insurance companies roughly 5% of GDP for carrying out the ugly little job not of providing health care but of deciding who *doesn't* get health care."

What this *really* shows is that, once you've got modern medicine, however delivered, most of the difference between national mortality rates is cultural. How much do you exercise? What sort of diet do you eat? Do you smoke/drink/do drugs?

Whether or not a society tends to throw a huge sum at somebody in the last few months of their lives trying to stave off the inevitable a little has a great impact on percentage of GDP, but next to none on mortality; Those are very expensive days you're buying. I suppose it's within the power of the government to significantly lower that percentage, with little impact on mortality rates, by forcing people to let their parents shuffle off the mortal coil while there are still options untried.

Go ahead, promote that, the Republicans could use the help.

In the mean time, if you want someplace the government could contribute to cutting costs, without pissing off a huge part of the population, try going after the AMA: The practice of medicine is a classic guild, with government enforced entry limits, to drive up the cost of what amounts to, most of the time, nothing more complex than what an auto mechanic does. We could get better medical care, at lower prices, if the government would just STOP enforcing the AMA's guild status.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | August 2, 2007 6:31 AM

What this *really* shows is that, once you've got modern medicine, however delivered, most of the difference between national mortality rates is cultural. How much do you exercise? What sort of diet do you eat? Do you smoke/drink/do drugs?

So what you are claiming, Mr. Bellmore, is that the Canadians have a radicaly healthier lifestyle than their American counterparts? Yeah, everyone one in Canada eats their vegetables, and exercises, and no one drinks, smokes, or does drugs--it's well-known. And I'm sure the fact that in Canada it's not illegal to practice medicine without a license helps a lot, too.

Posted by rea | August 2, 2007 7:39 AM

Clearly Bellmore is enamored with the restorative properties of poutine, the ambrosia of the True North.

Posted by jlw | August 2, 2007 11:25 AM

I also heard Tim Hortons can cure Alzheimers!

Posted by JP | August 2, 2007 12:52 PM