The Worst Thing That Could Happen

Paul Krugman says that the worst thing that could happen -- for the Republicans -- is that a government-supported health care program like SCHIP could actually work.

Now, why should Mr. Bush fear that insuring uninsured children would lead to a further “federalization” of health care, even though nothing like that is actually in either the Senate plan or the House plan? It’s not because he thinks the plans wouldn’t work. It’s because he’s afraid that they would. That is, he fears that voters, having seen how the government can help children, would ask why it can’t do the same for adults.

And there you have the core of Mr. Bush’s philosophy. He wants the public to believe that government is always the problem, never the solution. But it’s hard to convince people that government is always bad when they see it doing good things. So his philosophy says that the government must be prevented from solving problems, even if it can. In fact, the more good a proposed government program would do, the more fiercely it must be opposed.

This sounds like a caricature, but it isn’t. The truth is that this good-is-bad philosophy has always been at the core of Republican opposition to health care reform. Thus back in 1994, William Kristol warned against passage of the Clinton health care plan “in any form,” because “its success would signal the rebirth of centralized welfare-state policy at the very moment that such policy is being perceived as a failure in other areas.”

In other words, the GOP and the president are willing to let a program that has proven to work end in order to prove a misguided political philosophy.

It must be about philosophy, because it surely isn’t about cost. One of the plans Mr. Bush opposes, the one approved by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in the Senate Finance Committee, would cost less over the next five years than we’ll spend in Iraq in the next four months. And it would be fully paid for by an increase in tobacco taxes.

Oh, that's the problem: raising the tobacco tax. May the FSM forbid that we should actually ask the people who are going to be needing the health care system -- both public and private -- the most in the future to pay for it.

There are arguments you can make against programs, like Social Security, that provide a safety net for adults. I can respect those arguments, even though I disagree. But denying basic health care to children whose parents lack the means to pay for it, simply because you’re afraid that success in insuring children might put big government in a good light, is just morally wrong.

These are the same people who weep and carry on about the oxymoronic "lives of the unborn" and label the Democratic Party as "baby killers" for being pro-choice. On the other hand, why should the Republicans worry about poor sick kids? Everyone knows they end up voting for the Democrats, so the less of them around, the better, right?

Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.