Healthcare reform confronts pre-existing conditions

So it’s come to this. The reason we can’t create a massive new Federal entitlement — universal healthcare — is that it might endanger another massive Federal entitlement, Medicare.

Call it a pre-existing condition.

We’ve reached a stage in the debate over the future of our social safety net, taxes, and the economy where the rhetoric is so muddled that most Americans have no idea what’s going on.

Democrats are pushing a complicated, kitchen-sink plan that was built by committee. By multiple committees.

Yes, it will insure tens of millions of Americans and end lots of insurance-industry nastiness.

But does anyone think this is the coherent, big-think, third-way solution that Barack Obama promised during the campaign? No way.

It’s too expensive, too riddled with compromises.

And the Republicans. Sheesh. They can’t decide whether they think there’s even really a problem or not.

When they trotted out their “solution” last week, it was a joke. Only three million extra Americans covered over the next decade.

Tens of millions still out in the cold.

If there’s a free-market, de-regulation, tort-reforming path to solving this problem, why haven’t conservatives found it? Or at least pointed us in the right direction?

It would have been great if, from the beginning, Republicans had signaled a true willingness to collaborate on this bill, shaping it in a bipartisan way.

Instead, they expressed publicly the hope that its defeat would be President Obama’s “Waterloo.”

My best hope for this dust-up is that the reform package that’s finally passed will be something we can fix once it’s out of the garage.

Social Security and Medicare — two of the best-beloved government programs in America — both required a lot of doctoring after they were rolled out, and they’re still far from perfect.

If the Democratic plan does win approval, Mr. Obama should make clear to the American people that this is only a first step. Health care reform is a work in progress.

Tags: health