{"id":12016,"date":"2010-12-31T02:18:08","date_gmt":"2010-12-31T09:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=12016"},"modified":"2010-12-31T02:18:08","modified_gmt":"2010-12-31T09:18:08","slug":"the-wyden-brown-health-care-proposal-will-conservative-states-put-their-money-where-their-mouths-are","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=12016","title":{"rendered":"The Wyden-Brown Health Care Proposal: Will Conservative States Put Their Money Where Their Mouths Are?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mid puff-piece<\/a> about how Democrat Ron Wyden and Republican Scott Brown are, like, totally <\/em>this odd couple!, the Washington Post<\/em> inadvertently discusses Wyden and Brown’s policy proposal for a single paragraph:<\/p>\n

In short, the legislation would allow states to opt out of the federal health law in 2014 instead of 2017, provided they meet minimum coverage benchmarks. The argument, Wyden said, is that the bill would give both conservatives and liberals a chance to prove their theories on how best to run health care. Conservative-leaning states antagonistic to the bill’s individual mandate provisions can try more market-based models. And the more liberal states that considered the overhaul insufficiently bold can give the public option a shot. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is really Wyden’s proposal (as was the original 2017 opt-out provision), and I think it’s good policy. If conservatives in Colorado think they can get better results for the same money, why shouldn’t they be able to try? And ditto for single-payer advocates in Vermont. Let a thousand flowers bloom, let the best policy win, etc etc..<\/p>\n

But it’s worrisome that the first Republican to publicly sign on is Scott Brown, perhaps the most liberal Republican in the Senate. I’d be happier if Wyden could have found some more right-wing support for his proposal; if some more conservative conservatives don’t wind up supporting this bill, what chance will it have of getting though a Republican-dominated House?<\/p>\n

Conservatives who actually thought they had better ideas of how to run health care might be eager to support Wyden\/Brown. After all, there’s no lack of evidence that left-wing ideas for health care work; there are dozens of countries providing universal health coverage for all their citizens, spending less for better outcomes, using principals that lefties in the US support. If they really believe their ideas are any good, conservatives will welcome the chance to implement those ideas in the real world.<\/p>\n

But that’s a big “if.” We’ll have to watch what happens in the next few months to see if conservatives really believe in their own ideas. My guess is that they don’t.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile<\/a>, the incoming Republican House majority demonstrates one thing they really do <\/em>believe in: Exploding the deficit with tax cuts for the rich.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mid puff-piece about how Democrat Ron Wyden and Republican Scott Brown are, like, totally this odd couple!, the Washington Post inadvertently discusses Wyden and Brown’s policy proposal for a single paragraph: In short, the legislation would allow states to opt … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[135,36,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crossposted-on-tada","category-health-care-and-related-issues","category-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12016\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}