Obama Running to the Right of Other Dems

Krugman continues his verbal jabs with Obama's campaign on his health care plan.
Paul Krugman's Blog

Have you seen or heard about the radio ad that Obama is running in Iowa about health care? It has a man and a woman talking, with the man leading off saying that health care mandates “force those who cannot afford health care insurance to buy it, punishing those who don’t fall in line.”


This is what I’ve been complaining about. I was willing to cut Obama slack on the lack of mandates in his plan, even though the economics says they’re necessary; I figured that in practice, if elected, he’d end up doing the right thing.*


I started ramping up the criticism when he started attacking his opponents from the right, making the lack of mandates a principle rather than a compromise — because that was poisoning the well, making it much harder for any future Democratic president to implement a plan that will work.


And whaddya know, now he’s running an ad that bears a striking resemblance to the infamous “Harry and Louise” ads, run by the insurance industry, that helped block health care reform in 1993.


Call it the audacity of cynicism.


Let me repeat the argument: “The point of a mandate isn’t to dictate how people should live their lives — it’s to prevent some people from gaming the system. Under the Obama plan, healthy people could choose not to buy insurance, then sign up for it if they developed health problems later. This would lead to higher premiums for everyone else. It would reward the irresponsible, while punishing those who did the right thing and bought insurance while they were healthy.”

Oy, Kos - Paul Krugman's Blog

The Edwards and Clinton proposals actually include a public option — that is, people can buy into a Medicare-type plan administered by the government. They are not forced to go to private insurance companies. In fact, the public option was what originally made people like myself and Ezra Klein enthusiastic about the Edwards plan.


The Obama plan includes a public option for everyone as well — but thereby hangs a tale. You see, when it was first announced, it didn’t: the public option was there only for selected groups — others would have to go with private insurance companies. It was only after several days of hectoring from progressive health care wonks that the Obama people said, in effect, “OK, we’ll make it available to everyone.” I was told that they really hadn’t thought about that — which is amazing, considering how important the public option is. (the Edwards campaign has been clear in stating that it might eventually lead to a single-payer system.)


This was one of the episodes that led health wonks I talk to to conclude that Obama may just not be that committed to universal care.


This gets once again at what I keep trying to tell people: on health care, Obama is consistently running to the right of his rivals.


And it’s deeply disappointing to have influential bloggers buying into the bizarre notion that trying to make a health care plan truly universal is somehow a gift to the insurance companies.