Former Clinton USDA Official: “Our political system is basically evil versus spineless now"

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75. Charlie Pierce wrote a great piece on this apathy regarding our health-care system

in particular:

"...The problem with the ACA all along has been that, for its many moving parts to function smoothly, there had to be a kind of unanimity in the country and in the country's politics that we all wanted it to work, that there was an ironclad consensus that the status quo sucked many gallons of pondwater. As should have been clear by its red-in-tooth-and-claw passage through the Congress, and certainly should have been clear by the mendacious campaign in 2010 that produced the worst Congress in the history of the Republic, and certainly should have been clear by the fact that Republican governors turned down FREE MONEY (!) in order to torpedo the act in their states, and certainly should have been clear by the 40-odd votes to repeal the thing by said Worst Congress Ever, neither that unanimity nor that consensus ever existed. It was not allowed to exist. It could not be allowed to develop, because our politics is so completely corrupted by corporate money.

So, we get the CBO report today, which does indeed cause concern for the implementation of the act, but causes concerns because the politics necessary to pass it at all required that we leave in place both the employer-based health-insurance system, and the pride of place owned by the private insurance industry. As Drum points out:

This is not something specific to Obamacare. It's a shortcoming in all means-tested welfare programs. It's basically Welfare 101, and in over half a century, no one has really figured out how to get around it. It's something you just have to accept if you support safety net programs for the poor. It's worth noting, however, that health care is an exception to this rule. It doesn't have to be means tested. If we simply had a rational national health care system, available to everyone regardless of income, then none of this would be an issue. There might still be a small income effect, but it would probably be barely noticeable. Since everyone would be fully covered no matter what, there would no high effective marginal tax rate on the poor and no reason not to work more hours. Someday we'll get there.

We truly are a nation that may die from the lack of the obvious. I am looking out my window at a country that did not (Canada)."


Read more: CBO Report On Obamacare - The View From The North - Esquire
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