Blast From The Health Care Past

Really interesting article about Nixon's plan for universal health care, which shares similarities with the major Democratic plans today. He called for it in 1974, and at that point he called have called for free lollipops for children and he wouldn't have gotten it through. This could clearly be seen as a job-saver, as well as an attempt to write the wrong of creating the HMO system and making the insurance industry even more powerful. But his universal system would have preserved the employer-based insurance plans, but this part is interesting:

Nixon first proposed national health insurance as a conservative California congressman in 1947. He grew up poor and lost two brothers to tuberculosis, which marked him for life. He frequently pointed to the cure for tuberculosis as a medical marvel that underscored the need for a public-private partnership on health care.

"It was something personal for him," Price said of Nixon's health-care push.

Despite the heated politics of Watergate, national health-care legislation was proceeding in Congress thanks to a compromise brokered by a young Democratic senator from Massachusetts, Edward Kennedy, a Nixon nemesis.

But then, according to a 1974 political almanac published by Congressional Quarterly, the AFL-CIO and the United Auto Workers lobbied successfully to kill the plan. Unions hoped to get a better deal after the next elections.

Wow. Shows you the folly of continually waiting until the next elections.

We are closer to the moment where everyone agrees that health care is a right and not a privilege and the government needs to play a role to revive the current broken system. Everyone has a different way of doing it, but I really like what I'm hearingabout the Edwards mandate:

Later today, John Edwards will announce the specifics of how his mandate works. And they're quite good. Whenever you come into contact with the health care system, or whenever you pay your taxes, you will be asked to provide proof of insurance, presumably a policy number or some similar identifier. If you cannot, you will automatically be enrolled in either a public plan that you qualify for (like Medicaid or S-CHIP) or the cheapest plan offered by his Health Insurance Market. Bills will then get sent out, and if they're not paid, will be collected just like the government collects on student loan debts, or taxes, or anything else, using tools up to and including collection agencies and wage garnishment. (It's notable, here, that Edwards doesn't shy away from saying what his stick will be.)

In this way, Edwards' plan is much less an individual mandate and much closer to a government mandate. The burden is less on the individual to seek new insurance and more on the government to simply enroll them in it. From there, they can opt in to a different insurer if they so choose, or simply stay with their default plan. It's a smart and efficient way to move towards universality, and, for now, it puts Edwards ahead of both Obama and Clinton on the substance of the policy, and the speed with which he presented it to the public.

This is the smartest way to quickly and efficiently get everyone in the country covered. And it will take the sting out of those who avoid the hospital for fear of not being able to pay; presumably, those who are indigent will be put on a public plan. In the end this will bring DOWN emergency room costs for constantly dealing with the uninsured. Not sure whether or not Nixon would approve.