Health Care in a Sick Economy

As jobs disappear and economic anxiety spreads, the incoming Congress is showing signs of getting serious about health care reform, and the entrenched health insurers are signaling their willingness to negotiate.

Two trade groups, America’s Health Insurance Plans and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, are saying they would guarantee coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions, if they can get a mandate for individual coverage by everyone, sick or well.

This "concession" comes as seven senators responsible for health legislation met yesterday and promised to work together--Democrats Max Baucus, Chris Dodd, Ted Kennedy and John D. Rockefeller IV along with Republicans Michael Enzi, Charles Grassley and Orrin Hatch.

The imminent appointment of Tom Daschle as Obama's point man on the issue is another sign that the failing economy is putting more pressure on Washington to create a health care safety net for everyone just as the 1930s produced Social Security for the old.

Without limits on predatory premiums and safeguards against fraud by providers, guaranteed coverage would do nothing to solve the crisis in which one out of every three dollars spent on health is going to insurers' overhead and profits.

But at least the issue is on the table, and the Wall Street Journal is sounding the alarm about a "slow-motion catastrophe" that might "add tens of millions more people to the federal balance sheet. Because the public option will enjoy taxpayer sponsorship, it will offer generous packages to consumers that no private company could ever afford or justify. And because federal officials will run not only the new plan but also the 'market' in which it 'competes' with private programs--like playing both umpire and one of the teams on the field--they will crowd out private alternatives and gradually assume a health-care monopoly."

Sounds something like the approach of a single-payer system, which rational observers have been urging all along, but nothing could be worse than what we have now

The Wall Street Journal Is Worried

As the McCain campaign concentrates on holding the red states, Rupert Murdoch's house organ for the super-rich sounds the alarm on what could happen if Barack Obama's coattails are long enough to give Democrats filibuster-proof majorities in Congress.

"Though we doubt most Americans realize it," a WSJ editorial warns, "this would be one of the most profound political and ideological shifts in U.S. history. Liberals would dominate the entire government in a way they haven't since 1965, or 1933. In other words, the election would mark the restoration of the activist government that fell out of public favor in the 1970s."

A sidebar lists Republican nightmares that passed the House this year but were blocked in the Senate--prescription-drug price controls, renegotiating mortgage contracts in bankruptcy, withdrawal timetables for funding the Iraq war and, horror of horrors, a windfall profits tax on oil companies.

Looking to the future, the Journal is doing a Paul Revere on the possibility of laws to expand health care coverage that could lead to a single-taxpayer system and a "tax-and-regulation scheme in the name of climate change."

To a liberal who was alive when FDR created such support systems as Social Security and FDIC insurance for bank accounts, going back to the 1930s and 1960s, when LBJ finally gave the vote to African-Americans, is nowhere near as scary as continuing the Bush debacle that is decimating our economy today.

But then again, the editors of the Wall Street Journal are so much more sophisticated about such matters, particularly with the Australian-billionaire sensibility they recently acquired.