Steele Warns Against Rushing Through Health Care Reform

Michael Steele, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, says that health care legislation should not be passed before the August recess, as it will rashly affect too much of the U.S. economy without time for consideration. (0:31)
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[Mark Moulton]

I don't really understand Mr. Steele's position. It looks to me like the President and Congressional Democrats are taking the health-care crisis seriously and giving it a pretty good shot. The goal is simple: Affordable, effective health-care for everyone in the country without increasing the federal deficit. Does he object to this goal?

If not, I just don't see how you get there without: a) a public option to increase competition and expand coverage; b) cutting current costs; c) increasing taxes. I'm not sure I could trust someone who said you could get to that goal without doing these three things. I certainly see a lot of room for improvement in bills currently being proposed, a lot of political nervousness, but the outlines seem about right.

Mr. Steele says all this is highly experimental. I guess it sort of is for the United States (except that our government already handles half of health-care spending), but many other countries seem to manage it okay. A lot of respected research (e.g., the 2000 World Health Organization study) finds that these other countries -- which offer a single-payer system (Canada, Britain) or do a mix of public and private plans (France, Netherlands), which is what Congress is considering -- tend to get better health outcomes for about half the cost. So I guess I don't see what is so damned "experimental."

Mr. Steele's list of reforms sounds pretty good, but a lot of them are already being incorporated in Democratic proposals. And most of them just sound like low-calorie campaign slogans that would make not a whit of difference to anybody, like where he said: "... no life-time health care benefits and insurance for Congressmen." What does that have to do with the national health-care crisis?

Any reform which increases competition among health-care payers and providers and helps break up State-level insurance monopolies and oligopolies, sounds good to me. I'd like to see more of that in Democratic plans (the "public option" is a good step in this direction, but much more could be done). Sometimes, based on their actions, I can't tell whether Republicans still believe in free-market competition or if they are happy just to go along with the existing system of local health-care monopolies.

From 2000 to 2006, Republicans had a great opportunity to introduce true free-market reforms to national health care, but I sure didn't see anything like that. Unlike the Republicans, the Democrats seem to be making an honest effort to live up to their own principles. Maybe we should cut them some slack and focus on constructive suggestions along the lines of cost-cutting and increasing free-market competition