One note from yesterday, before trying to unravel the drama of last night - I think both sides are mistaken to think that the debate over healthcare reform is changed by challenging cost estimates of the overall bill.
All over the Sunday talk shows yesterday was a conversation that went, basically, like this:
Republican stand-in: The bill increases the deficit! CBO is wrong! A lot of stuff isn't included!
Democrat stand-in: CBO says we're reducing the deficit, and more savings come in the second ten years. And who doesn't believe the CBO?
I tend to agree with Republicans that it's a fallacy to believe that rosy numbers from the Congressional Budget Office prove that healthcare reform is deficit neutral or even deficit reducing. This is an expensive change to our health insurance systems, and there are just too many unknowns to say, confidently, that we "know" that the net effect on the government is to reduce overall costs.
At the same time, the Republican charges make no sense for two reasons: first, Republicans have no particular comprehensive solution on healthcare, and the fixes they've proposed don't particularly reduce the deficit either; and second, the Republican charges about cost tend to ignore that any significant attempt to change our healthcare system and get it to work better for more people would have to involve some significant outlays of money. Our current approach to healthcare is, essentially, to keep some people from getting the care they need based on price. Changing that means the money has to come from somewhere.
Still, the bottom line here - and why the debate was so meaningless, ove and over - is that all the charges and countercharges are taking place in a fantasy land. Our government is already carrying unsustainable levels of debt. Adding to that debt is at least unrealistic and probably unconscionable. But no one, really, is prepared to make the really hard choices needed to approach our spending and revenue problems, or to tell the general public just how painful that correction is likely to be.
In the end, the debate over "what the healthcare plan costs" won't move anyone because on this, the two sides are plainly divided and unlikely to move: even if cost estimates are unrealistic, most Democrats have decided the benefits outweigh the problems of cost, and most Republicans have opposed health reform over far more basic disagreements than anything about spending. And the whole discussion is easiest if we don't ask more questions... and if we pretend not to notice the bigger problem... what a Wonderful World this will be.
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