Nicholas Kristof: Let Congress Go Without Insurance

[babylonsister]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/opinion/08kristof.html?_r=1

Let Congress Go Without Insurance

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: October 7, 2009


Let me offer a modest proposal: If Congress fails to pass comprehensive health reform this year, its members should surrender health insurance in proportion with the American population that is uninsured.

snip//

When nearly 3,000 people were killed on 9/11, we began wars and were willing to devote more than $1 trillion in additional expenses. Yet about the same number of Americans die from our failed insurance system every three weeks.

The obstacle isn’t so much money as priorities. America made it a priority to provide tax breaks, largely to the wealthy, in the Bush years, at a 10-year cost including interest of $2.4 trillion. Allocating less than half that much to assure equal access to health care isn’t deemed an equal priority.

The plan emerging in the Senate is no panacea. America needs to promote exercise and discourage sugary drinks to hold down the rise in obesity, diabetes and medical bills. We need more competition among insurance companies. And conservatives are right to call for tort reform to reduce the costs of malpractice insurance and defensive medicine.

But those steps are not a substitute for guaranteed health coverage for all Americans. And if health reform fails this year, then hopes for universal coverage will recede again. There was a lag of 19 years after the Nixon plan before another serious try, and a 16-year lag after the Clinton effort of 1993. Another 16-year delay would be accompanied by more than 700,000 unnecessary deaths. That’s more Americans than died in World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq combined.

The collapse of health reform would be a political and policy failure, but it would also be a profound moral failure. Periodically, there are political questions that are fundamentally moral, including slavery in the 19th century and civil rights battles in the 1950s and ’60s. In the same way, allowing tens of thousands of Americans to die each year because they are uninsured is not simply unwise and unfortunate. It is also wrong — a moral blot on a great nation.

[democracy1st]

1. K & R

[ixion]

2. Congress serves at the will of the People

we should be able to tell them how much they're going to make, and what benefits they will receive.

I'm all for making their insurance more 'competitive' :evilgrin:

[ThomCat]

3. For once he is mostly right.

If he had left out that garbage about tort reform this would be a really good article.

[excess_3]

4. better to... cut off insurance to the civil service

[Captain Hilts]

7. They don't make policy. nt

[excess_3]

11. they need coverage, Congress doesn't .nt

[bullimiami]

5. yes. let their insurances be cancelled and let them find their own private insurance.

let them see how their pre-existing conditions work in the real world for a change.

[Captain Hilts]

8. Or try to buy as an individual. nt

[thecrow]

9. Unfortunately they would still be able to buy it.

Whereas................we can't.
Let them go without pay as well.

[Captain Hilts]

6. We can't expect millionaires on TV and govt employees with govt-backed insurance to do this right nt

[stray cat]

10. Same for their pensions - get rid of it and let them go with 401Ks

[Stuart G]

12. K & R

[smoogatz]

13. K&R to Mr. Kristoff.

I agree. In fact, I'd go further and mandate that any member of congress who votes against an affordable, robust public option in committee or on the floor should be immediately stripped of his/her government-run healthcare.

[Melissa G]

14. Yeah, but if a DUer blogs about this we are crazy

:eyes: :sarcasm: Everyone should be saying "Let Congress go without Insurance" and asking Congress to justify their behavior re Health CARE reform, Not Heath Insurance reform.

[samsingh]

15. yes

[tonysam]

16. I go further

Let Congress go without paychecks and see how the rest of us who are trying to survive live.

Maybe then they will quit stalling on EUI.