The NYT had a piece on the health care plans being put forward by the presidential candidates that seemed determined to frame the issues in a set of caricatures, where Democrats push for big government while Republicans like the market. It makes this assertion at several points, at one point even telling readers mockingly that "Democrats are competing furiously among themselves over who has the bigger, better plan to control costs and to approach universal coverage.” But is this government/market distinction accurate? Do the Republicans favor ending the subsidies for the private insurers operating within the Medicare program that the Medicare Payments Advisory Commission estimates at 12 percent per beneficiary? Isn’t a government subsidy a form of government intervention? Do the Republicans favor eliminating government granted patent monopolies that raise the price of prescription drugs and medical supplies to levels that are many times the free market price? Aren’t government imposed monopolies a form of government intervention? In short, the NYT piece is written entirely from the Republican perspective in which the interventions they support, which have the effect of redistributing income upward and making health care more expensive, are disguised as being simply the natural workings of the market. On the other hand, the efforts of the Democrats to restructure the market to make it more workable (e.g. mandating coverage to eliminate the problem of adverse section) are mocked as “big government.” [Btw, the NYT article does not mention once the Medicare for All, single-payer proposal put forward by Representative Dennis Kucinich. This is the only health care reform plan that has any mass-based support. Maybe one of their investigative reporters could track down Kucinich’s website and uncover some of the details of this proposal.]
--Dean Baker
