By Dave Anderson:
During the health care debate, "reasonable" Republicans, market based wonks and moderate conservatives argued that the Democratic plan was too divisive and needlessly partisan when there was another liberal wonk approved health care reform package that had bipartisan sponsorship in the Senate in the form of the Wyden-Bennett bill. Bennett is a Republican Senator from Utah. Wyden-Bennett is more of a game changer than what eventually passed as it explicitly disconnected the linkage between insurance and employment for the 18 to 65 year old population.
The idea was that Bennett would stick with his namepiece legislation and bring along four or five of the six other Republican co-sponsors. And then we could all enjoy David Broder gush euphoric at grand bi-partisan policy making amidst the slaying of sacred cows held equally secure by both the ugly, shrill left and the slightly aggrieved right.
There is one problem with this pony plan; it assumes minimal Republican Party discipline and no ability for the base to turn on anyone it annoints as not a true conservative.
Booman has a bit on the costs of pissing off the Republican base in a seat where the incumbent conservative Republican faces no credible Democratic challenger.
Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah, the man legendary Mormon columnist Jack
Anderson referred to as "Howard Hughes's man
in Washington," is going to be the first incumbent senator to lose his job this
year.
A new Salt Lake Tribune poll of Republican delegates
shows Bennett running in third, behind GOP challengers Mike Lee and Tim
Bridgewater.
Lee logged 37 percent support in the survey, while Bridgewater came in
at 20 percent, and Bennett lagged at 16 percent.
The survey of 400 Republican delegates, with a 4.4 percent margin of
error, was conducted April 22-25 by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research
Inc. of Washington, D.C. It comes less than two weeks before the May 8
state GOP convention.
"Bennett has almost no shot of getting more votes at the convention than
Bridgewater and Lee," Brad Coker, managing director at Mason-Dixon,
said Monday.
Utah uses a delegate system to determine who will be on the ballot. If
any candidate gets 60% of the delegates, they win the primary outright.
If not, then the two top delegate-winners face off before the
Republican electorate at-large.
Bennett is losing his seat in the primary/convention stage for proposing Wyden-Bennett. Why would any Republican who is due to face a primary before 2014 vote for their own doom?
Time to discard the myth of Wyden-Bennett as an untaken route to bipartisan HCR/HIR. The incentives would never have lined up for any Republican who has any interest in continuing their career in Republican/conservative politics or institutions to vote for Wyden-Bennett even if they co-sponsored the bill at any point.
Lack of Republican discipline was not the only drawback for Wyden-Bennet. The very heart of their proposal was uncoupling health care from employment which would be politically radioactive from the union point of view. From the conception of the Blues everyday Americans have been led to believe that subsidizing health care insurance is as much a part of their workplace benefits as compliance with OSHA safety rules or adequate lighting.
ReplyDeleteThis misguided belief has become so entrenched I can't find anyone able to engage in a civil conversation about changing it, although it was also at the core of one of the Bush administration's little-known health-care reform proposals which never saw the light of day.
The advantages of separating health care from employment are huge. For starters, anyone who loses a job should not be faced with instantly more costly health care which is all that is offered by COBRA guidelines, and even that vanishes after 18 months. Also, as long as health care subsidies are employer expenses (whether taxed or not) American companies are at a competitive disadvantage in a global marketplace where most of the rest of the world manages to deliver universal health care by other means.
Meantime, what we have is an incremental approach to the nub of the problem. Many people still irrationally cling to the idea that if young, health people have no "need" for insurance, overlooking the simple reality that no one yet born will forever remain either young or healthy. The thinking is mystifying, like having no plan for retirement beyond winning a lottery, but that's how many think.
Changing the national mindset will be a long process, but the mechanisms are in place. Taxing high-end plans, tweaking reimbursements and encouraging journalists to keep medical costs in the spotlight will over time bring about constructive changes. Phrases like "bending the curve" and "nudging" are not dramatic but are easier to sell than abrupt changes that frighten ignorant people.
Waiting for social change is like watching a tree grow. Sometimes your only encouragement is that another year has been added to the calendar, because the damn thing doesn't look any bigger this year than you remember it from two or three years ago. Sometimes all the hope you have left is that it's still alive.