Health Care BS

Since last week’s Democrat debate, the “progressive” blogosphere has been abuzz with chatter about former Senator Mike Gravel. Having perused his positions on a variety of issues, I’m not surprised that the wackier elements find him so alluring, but I’ll let the political blogs deal with his nutty pronouncements about terrorism, Iraq, etc. I’ll focus on his health care positions.

For starters, you will be relieved to know that health care reform is not as difficult as most of us thought. During Gravel’s recent appearance at the SEIU Health Care Forum, he was asked how he would handle the problem and delivered himself of the following:

Oh, well, real simple. We can turn around and say let’s have a health care program that establishes equality. And I’ll give you the name of it. It’s called the universal single-payer … Everybody gets the same product universally in the United States of America. And then if you want more than the product you got, you pay for it.

In other words, his “simple” solution would burden the country with two health care systems: a good one for the financially well off and a mediocre system for the rest of us. Sound familiar? This is how we do public education, and that system has produced a grotesque combination of plummeting quality and skyrocketing expenditure. But it’s OK, because he has experience with our prototype single-payer systems:

I get my meds from the VA and I get the rest from the Medicare. So I know the system up front and personal, and I don’t have to tell you about somebody in Benton, Iowa crying on my shoulder …

If he were more conscientious about taking those meds, he might realize that their easy availability through Medicare Part-D is the result of market based reforms that are anathema to his new fans among the nutroots. But, hey, what does critical thinking matter when we’re all going to get free health care?