The Roundtable

This Week, ABC News
December 27, 2009

David Brooks: I don’t oppose it (health care reform act) because I want to step on the necks of the poor, as you could say. I oppose it, and it’s a close call for me, because we used to spend 10 percent of our GNP on health care, now it’s 17, soon it’ll be 20, 22, more on health care, less on education, less on infrastructure, less on investment, less on everything else. This bill will do absolutely nothing. It will slightly increase the amount of money we spend on health care. So what could you do politically to do something about that? Well, I wouldn’t mind a single payer. Frankly I prefer a single payer to what we have now, because that actually would control costs. My preferred option though would be to give consumers choice (Enthoven, Wyden-Bennett).

http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=9428760

On controlling costs, conservative but credible New York Times columnist David Brooks tells us, quite accurately, that this bill will do nothing. As he says, “Frankly I prefer a single payer to what we have now because that actually would control costs.”

Admittedly it is difficult to follow him on the leap from single payer to a consumer-based approach. Single payer helps get people the care they need while controlling costs. Consumer-based health plan choices control costs by erecting financial barriers to care.

Maybe he doesn’t want to step on their necks, but a consumer directed choke collar (demand side control) does seem less humane than optimal single payer resource management (supply side control).