Though it is not our policy to distribute a Quote of the Day message on Christmas Day, we have to make an exception this year and thank Bruce Bartlett for his Christmas present to PNHP and to all of us who dream of a future with health care justice throughout the nation.
A Conservative Case for the Welfare State
By Bruce Bartlett
The New York Times, December 25, 2012
(Bruce Bartlett held senior policy roles in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and served on the staffs of Representatives Jack Kemp and Ron Paul.)
At the root of much of the dispute between Democrats and Republicans over the so-called fiscal cliff is a deep disagreement over the welfare state. Republicans continue to fight a long-running war against Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and many other social-welfare programs that most Americans support overwhelmingly and oppose cutting.
Republicans in Congress opposed the New Deal and the Great Society, but Republican presidents from Dwight D. Eisenhower through George H.W. Bush accepted the legitimacy of the welfare state and sought to manage it properly and fund it adequately. When Republicans regained control of Congress in 1994 they nevertheless sought to repeal the New Deal and Great Society programs they had always opposed.
Republicans are now using the fiscal impasse to try to raise the age for Medicare and reduce Social Security benefits by changing the index used to adjust them for inflation. They know that such programs will be easier to abolish in the future if the number of people who qualify can be reduced and benefits are cut so that privatization becomes more attractive.
This is foolish and reactionary. Moreover, there are sound reasons why a conservative would support a welfare state.
One problem with this conservative view is its lack of an empirical foundation. Research by Peter H. Lindert of the University of California, Davis, shows clearly that the welfare state is not incompatible with growth while providing a superior quality of life to many of those left to sink or swim in America.
In a new paper for the New America Foundation, Professor Lindert summarizes his findings. He points out that there are huge efficiencies in providing pensions and health care publicly rather than privately. A main reason is that in a properly run welfare state, benefits are nearly universal, which eliminates vast amounts of administrative overhead necessary to decide who is entitled to benefits and who isn’t, as is the case in America, and eliminates the disincentives to work resulting from benefit phase-outs.
A 2003 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that Canada’s single-payer health system had less than a third of the per-capita administrative cost of the United States system, with its many private insurance companies and overlapping government programs.
Americans believe that their health system is the best in the world, but in fact it is not.
The one area where the United States tops all other countries in terms of health is cost. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States spent more than any other country – 17.4 percent of gross domestic product on health in 2009. By contrast, Britain spent only 9.8 percent of G.D.P. on health.
Thus, for no more than the United States already spends through government, we could have a national health-insurance system equal to that in Britain. The 7.6 percent of G.D.P. difference between American and British total health spending is about equal to the revenue raised by the Social Security tax. So, in effect, having a single-payer health system like Britain’s could theoretically give Americans 7.6 percent of G.D.P. to spend on something else – equivalent to abolishing the payroll tax.
This is a powerful conservative argument for national health insurance.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/25/a-conservative-case-for-the-welfare-state/#more-158917
Thank you, Bruce Bartlett, for perhaps the greatest Christmas gift of all – a rationale for why we all have to join together to provide health care for everyone.
(The 2003 NEJM article cited is that of PNHP co-founders Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein, plus Terry Campbell of the Canadian Institute for Health Information.)