A Voice of Reason

Today's Boston Globe Op-Ed ran a column by Farah Stockman titled "A Better Way to Tackle Health Law."  To me, this piece expressed a rarely heard moderate voice of reason.  She correctly blames GOP extremists for needlessly creating the recent shutdown/debt-ceiling crisis, in a fruitless effort to reverse Obamacare.  But here is the news part: she actually admits that the law is full of flaws, and she even describes some of them,

"For instance, there is a danger that the law makes it too easy for employers to “game the system” by choosing to pay the penalty for failing to provide health insurance instead of the premiums. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that some 7 million people might lose their current insurance because of that. Smart people who are worried about Obamacare ought to be talking about how to solve that problem.

Others fret that employees themselves might opt to pay the relatively small fine instead of signing up for a health insurance plan. Since they can’t be denied due to pre-existing conditions, there is the risk of moral hazard: People might sign up only when they are sick. That would make the system too expensive to sustain.

And perhaps the biggest looming challenge is how to handle the cost. We still don’t know whether the program will end up saving the federal government money in the long run, or end up costing lots of money.

Stockman speaks for many of us who hate the unreadable, cumbersome law and the parliamentary trickery that skanked it through the back door, instead of an honest vote.  Much as I am contemptuous of the cynical process and the thousands of pages of obfuscatory verbiage,  I am supportive of some of the reforms that the law addresses.  I like the single payer idea, especiallly for pre-existing conditions coverage and the attempt to offer subsidized health care coverage to those who want it but cannot afford it.   In general, I don't think the government should be telling employers and insurance companies how to run their businesses.  

As for those who believe the sky is falling or the runaway locomotive is about to collide with destiny, I can tell you that we have had most of these key reforms in Mass for the past seven years, and all hell has NOT broken loose.  

Stockman nails the solution here:

"The uncertain impact on the federal budget is a cause for concern — not just for the doomsday cult caucus, but for everybody. Wouldn’t it be nice if fiscal conservatives focused on problem-solving about that? Every new law has flaws, especially one as complex as this. The problem is that neither Democrats nor Republicans have an interest in fixing what’s broken here. Democrats don’t want to admit anything is broken and Republicans don’t want to admit it can be fixed.

So we are likely to live with the flaws in the Affordable Care Act for years to come, as long as Ted Cruz can make a bigger name for himself trying to end the law rather than mend it.

Sound reasonable?