We start today's column with something that New York Times columnist David Brooks said, which was (and we're paraphrasing here) that government can not run something as complex as healthcare, and that there are certain things it's meant to do, just not healthcare. However, is it that governments simply can not do it, or is it just that the United States government can not do it? It seems as though the latter is the answer because in most other industrialized nations, there is universal healthcare. In the United States, implementation is difficult because insurance companies have to stay in the healthcare business.
With all the cancellations of policies, it hasn't been enough for the insurance companies to keep getting paid, but now it's also a matter of how much, and that's why it's difficult for the government to engineer a healthcare plan. Government is not going to confiscate your healthcare as Congressman Mike Rogers (R-MI) emphatically stated. Insurance companies now have to commit 85% of their collected premiums to care, which means less profits due to the Affordable Care Act. The cancellation of policies is retribution for that financial hit.
The reason that other countries' governments have made healthcare work is because they've taken the profit motive out of care. The Affordable Care Act will eventually work and the eventual consequence is that the United States will either move toward a single payer system or to the eventual end of employer-based healthcare. If you're calculating the American government as a whole getting more conservative (because of big monied interests) like we do then you have to figure on employer based insurance going away sometime in the future. Not in the next year but possibly 10 to 12 years down line is well within the realm of possibility. Those are all the 'pink slips' that Congressman Rogers was referring to.
[And is it just us that finds Congressman Rogers' entire complaint about the sites security readiness a completely joke, or what? Mr. Rogers, a former F.B.I. agent, endorses the NSA's data collection and surveillance activities - essentially spying on Americans, so we find it disingenuous that he would bring this up as a point of concern.]
It's a 'process of difficulty' as the Washington Post's Erza Klein described it. Case in point is the interview with Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York. He said that initially the bishops and the Catholic Church were in favor of the Affordable Care Act, but now are opposing the Obama Administration on it. One of the reasons the Cardinal cited was that the Affordable Care Act did not cover undocumented citizens. When President Obama took to the House floor to explain that the undocumented would not be covered, he was famously called a liar by Congressman Joe Wilson. It's a silly rhetorical argument that Father Dolan was making, but when in reality, it's all about birth control and limiting access to it for women. Father Dolan eloquently reiterated how Pope Francis wants to move beyond those debates but it's clear that the Church does not.
Today's real topic was 'Obamacare,' and whether it will work or not, but if government can be an agent of change. Unfortunately, the only one who thought government could have a positive effect was Democratic Mayor of Baltimore
Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and sadly she sounded naive saying so. However, when someone sounds naive, it's because the person is emoting sympathy, and in this case sympathy for those who do not have healthcare. In today's America, sympathy isn't taken seriously. Fortunately for all of us whether we know it or not, Father Dolan's boss disagrees.
Roundtable: New York Times Columnist David Brooks; Democratic Mayor of Baltimore
Stephanie Rawlings-Blake; NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent
Andrea Mitchell; and Political Director & Chief White House
Correspondent for NBC, Chuck Todd.
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