THE CHRONICLE is gung-ho for natonal health care. Until last week, the newspaper's editorialists had raised not a peep about the manifest costs or risks of Obamacare. Then a bunch of greybeards from the Houston Medical Center cleared their throats.
Chiefs of all the Med Center hospitals and research centers called for a slowdown of the rush to pass a health-care bill before anyone really had a chance to read, digest, or debate the 1000-page legislation.
Call them the community of adults who actually know something the subject they address -- a vastly underrepresented community, by the way, on the editorial board of our local newspaper.
Suddenly the Chronicle was all for taking time to get it right, but with this stern caveat: "so long as getting it right doesn't devolve into an excuse for not getting it done."
The problem with this two-step is that "getting it right" well may require -- well, does require -- policies other than Obamacare.
The real question is what to do -- about costs and regulations; about institutions and processes; about structure and details; about consequences, intended and unintended, for our nation's physical and economic health. And here the Chronicle has nothing to add to the debate.
"Whatever" is not a useful policy. And "just do it," without more, is foolhardy.
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The editors finally did a de facto (though unadmitted) Emily Litella about there being 45 or 46 or 47 million "Americans" without medical insurance.
Here's the old reality. And here ("never mind") is the new one:
The elephant in the room is illegal immigration. Of the nation's 47 million uninsured, only about 16 million will get insurance under the proposed plans. Many of the remaining 31 million uninsured are here illegally. Those seeking care at the hospital district's clinics and hospitals are mostly women and children. We can't ignore them. We have to decide how to care for them and who will pay.
Okay.
How shall we care for them?
Who will pay?
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On reflection, it's hasty to suggest that the Chronicle has added nothing of substance to the debate about health care. The newspaper viscerally hates private insurance companies.
The impression held by growing numbers of Americans is that some health insurers are little more than buccaneers whose loyalty is only to the bottom line. Count us among them. (Emphasis added)
So whatever comes, I suppose, the editorialists have at least identified the evildoers: the traditional (and very serviceable) market system for managing the costs of medical risks.
It's not perfect, you see, and therefore (by necessary implication of the hysterical editorial) should be -- must be -- replaced by a government program.
And when the government swallows up the bad insurance companies, perfection -- which government programs rarely achieve -- will cease to be the Chronicle's standard of measure.
Most complaints, however justifiable, will be lost in the haze of good intentions. And the big shortcomings can be always blamed on conservatives for failing to ante sufficient taxpayer dollars.
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Our local editorialists are not alone, of course. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also despises private insurance companies.
"It's almost immoral what they're doing," Pelosi told reporters . . . . "Of course, they've been immoral all along in how they have treated the people they insure," she said, adding, "They are the villains."
The Houston Chronicle editorial board and San Francisco's Ms. Pelosi: soulmates.
UPDATE: Thanks for the link from blogHouston.
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