Insuring the insured

Kevin Drum takes an article from the Weekly Standard and actually agrees with it.

The idea is that the real health care crisis in the States is the one that forces people to stay in jobs they hate, live in areas of the country that are too expensive, and live in fear of losing their job and therefore their healath insurance.

Exactly so, writes Kevin, but...

This is 100% right. Unfortunately, because they're conservatives, Ross and Reihan are unwilling to take the obvious next step and endorse some kind of sensible national healthcare plan, even though they provide a synopsis of the issues involved that would do justice to The Nation. In fact, I was unable to discern any real plan at all. They apparently feel that the answer is to somehow increase competition in the healthcare market, which will drive costs down so much that it will be feasible to simply mandate that everyone in America purchase their own private insurance. This is a fantasy.

Still, their PR idea is spot on. If liberals want to sell the idea of national healthcare, we should quit marketing it as a welfare plan for the uninsured. Instead, we should be focused on the healthcare complaints of those who already have insurance but are dissatisfied anyway: Lack of choice in physicians. HMOs that make it hard to see a specialist. High copayments. Fear of losing coverage if you lose your job. Long waits for non-urgent care. New (and usually worse) healthcare coverage every time your HR department is told to find a cheaper plan. Fear that preexisting conditions won't be covered if you take a new job. The risk of financial ruin if someone in your family has a truly catastrophic illness.

That's the way to sell universal healthcare. After all, the uninsured mostly vote for Democrats anyway, and the rest of the country views programs aimed at the uninsured as a mere welfare program to be actively avoided. Expand your marketing to the 80 million who are occasionally uninsured, however, and you're starting to make real progress. Expand it even further to those who are insured but unhappy, and you've hit electoral gold.

He's right. Sadly, the idea that we should provide universal access to prenatal care, and that the poor shouldn't have to rely on emergency rooms for health care (which further drives up health care costs for everyone) is going to be a non-seller for most voters for the foreseeable future. "Expanding welfare" does not have a long tradition of electoral success. On the other hand, making health care a middle class entitlement would be a sure seller. It has the additional benefit of removing health care as a corporate responsibility, which maybe, just maybe, will convince corporate CEOs to do something that actually is in their stockholders' best long-term interest for a change.