The Paradox of Health Care Reform

Matthew Yglesisas explains the paradox of health care reform that left must overcome...

The big problem, politically speaking, with health care is that you basically have people on the left arguing both sides of the question. On the one hand, insofar as your plan is “big government” that’s left-wing. But insofar as your plan is expensive, that’s also left-wing. Which is because people normally think of big government programs as expensive. But when it comes to health care, heavy-handed government intervention is actually way cheaper than private sector alternatives. Consequently, every time you try to make the plan more “moderate” by, for example, curbing the influence of a public option you actually wind up making the plan more “left wing” by needing to raise more taxes. And if you want to make the plan cheaper, while still actually achieving its goals, then you need to make it more left-wing not more moderate. But in the United States,ideological correctness and special interest politics prevents us from admitting this.