One more thing on the health care question: Nathan Newman accuses me of thinking all the unions, "fair-share" advocates, consumer groups, and so forth fighting for expansions to the employer-based system are "dumb." What I actually said is that some unions have short-term goals which may conflict with longer-term goals, but no matter. What I would suggest is that Newman checks out whether all the unions really are standing lockstep behind him lately. Here, for instance, is Andy Stern, head of SEIU, the nation's largest union, admitting that it's time to nail up the coffin of the employer-based care system:
The truth is, we are way past incremental change. It is not going to work. As the Institute of Medicine says and I think it applies here, your trying harder will not work; it is changing systems of care. Well, I think the same thing is true about our health care system. It is not just trying harder. It is not just making incremental changes. It is actually changing the system of health care, so that is designed to deal with all the other economic realities. You can't apply a 20th Century health care system to a 21st Century economy.
The fundamental change for me means, one, we have to recognize that employer-based health care is ending. It is dying in front of our very eyes. The charts say it there. It will not rebound I believe in the next economic upturn in America. It was a good friend. It served America well in the 20th Century. We love it dearly. Employers, to their credit, lived with it for a long time, despite all of the distortions that it has created, but it is collapsing in front of our eyes. It may still be breathing, but anybody who can look into the future says this employer-based health care system is over in America. If we don't say that, we are just going to keep building on a very unstable foundation that is not really appropriate.
Maybe they're not so dumb after all.
