Posted under Conservatism & Health Care & Media & Political Philosophy
For a long time I have been defending PCR against the claim from more mainstream conservatives that he is or has become liberal, a claim they base on his opposition to the War, opposition to Bush, writing at CounterPunch, etc. These people are usually completely ignorant of PCR’s background. But after this latest rant, I am not sure I can any longer defend him. He has come out in favor of a single-payer health care system. He seems to have either such an axe to grind against insurance companies and the system that he has embraced a policy counter to his conservative instincts just to spite them, or he really has drifted to a populist leftist position.
Nothing in the Constitution authorizes the Feds to do ANYTHING regarding healthcare. Period. End of discussion. If you want health care reform at the Federal level then bother to amend the Constitution or shut up. The only things that I can think of that the Feds could constitutionally do re. health care is dismantle the unconstitutional programs and regulations that are already in place and change the patent laws re. pharmaceuticals. If anyone can think of anything else then I would like to hear it.
Americaneocon on 23 Sep 2009 at 2:49 am #
RedPhillips: Actually, I’m sure you guys will be coming out for single-payer in no time. “Conservative Heritage” is now “Whacked Anti-War Heritage” by now. No need to distance yourself from PCR … we know who your allies are over here. And it ain’t the good guys!
RedPhillips on 23 Sep 2009 at 3:34 am #
AN, just out of curiosity, do you agree with my second paragraph? One characteristic of neocons is that they are not strict constitutionalists and have made peace with a social welfare safety net.
Kirt Higdon on 23 Sep 2009 at 4:20 am #
I’m not quite sure the point of keeping score on a writer’s commentaries for the purpose of excommunicating him if he goes “off the reservation”. Does PCR’s endorsement of single payer health care suddenly render invalid his criticisms of Bush’s and Obama’s wars? If he was running for office, one would have to evaluate his positions on a lot of different issues, but he’s not; he’s just writing. Essays on completely different topics should be evaluated individually.
RedPhillips on 23 Sep 2009 at 4:59 am #
I understand Kirt, my point is that I can no longer defend him against the charge of liberalism. While his articles should and do stand on their own for the most part, this actually does hurt his anti-war case on the right. Because he has lost credibility as an anti-war conservative. He is no longer an anti-war conservative someone might group together with Buchanan. He is now just another bitter anti-war leftist. In the same way, it enhances his credibility with the CounterPunch crowd. He can now be that reformed guy from the Reagan Administration. We understand it is not that simple. I suspect PCR still has conservative instincts and inclinations, but how do I on some blog say to some movement con bashing PCR, “PCR is an anti-war conservative, not a liberal?” That movement con could simply respond by saying “Oh yeah. He endorsed single payer.” Those sort of debates do not lend themselves to a lot of nuance.
Kirt Higdon on 23 Sep 2009 at 11:15 am #
Looks like this issue has also come up in the topic of Justin Raimondo’s obit of Irving Kristol. I would endorse Filmer’s comments about the distinction between agreeing with some of a person’s positions and disagreeing with others and the difficulty and possible danger of forming political alliances with people with whom you have broad areas of disagreement.
mikefromwichita on 23 Sep 2009 at 12:26 pm #
From the PCR piece
“What the U.S. needs is a single-payer not-for-profit health system that pays doctors and nurses sufficiently that they will undertake the arduous training and accept the stress and risks of dealing with illness and diseases.”
Personally I would be more than willing to see an Amendment to achieve the above in a Constitutional manner. There is nothing in the PCR article that indicates a desire to legidlate in a manner outside the Constitution.
Also NOTHING about being a paleocon requires a person to accept sel-serving manipulation of Law and Society by the wealthy and their corporations. That sort of funhouse mirror ‘free market’ is a neocon trademarked Con.
RedPhillips on 23 Sep 2009 at 12:58 pm #
“There is nothing in the PCR article that indicates a desire to legislate in a manner outside the Constitution.”
He is not proposing a Constitutional Amendment, and to think he has that in mind is a very generous reading. So unless he has in mind an Amendment, he is proposing legislation outside the Constitution.
“Also NOTHING about being a paleocon requires a person to accept sel-serving manipulation of Law and Society by the wealthy and their corporations. That sort of funhouse mirror ‘free market’ is a neocon trademarked Con.”
Paleos should reject economic reductionism, economic man thinking and efficiency as the highest good. A trademark of libertarians and of neocons in a watered down way. Neocons generally concede the need for regulation almost all of which is unconstitutional. But the American system is free-market by default at least at the Federal level because the Constitution allows almost no interference in the marketplace except for tariffs and taxation. Any regulation should take place at the state level assuming the state constitution allows it.
S.L. Toddard on 23 Sep 2009 at 1:27 pm #
Red, what would you recommend to solve whatever health-care problem there is? I think it’s clear that the system we have is not working – gov’t regulation, as per usual, does not hamper insurance companies from taking advantage of subscribers – healthcare corporations literally write the legislation that regulates them. gov’t regulation is more often a boon to the mega-corporations that are being regulated, and that is the case here.
And what do you think of Dr. Fleming’s suggestion:
1. “break up the government regulated insurance monopolies
2 “set up Health Savings Accounts”
3. “provide low-cost basic treatment for the poorer classes”
Provide that the above actions take place in their constitutionally appropriate venues (i.e. the Health Savings Accounts and low-cost treatment be provided at the state level).
Brad C on 23 Sep 2009 at 2:21 pm #
I read PCR’s argument as something like “Given that we have accepted the principle of government intervention in the health industry, and given that such intervention has destroyed the possibility of a “free market” health care reform, then we should treat health care on a not-for-profit model with bureaucratic means, like law enforcement.”
This would make his argument a prudential adaptation to current conditions rather than a theoretical endorsement of liberal principles. From a pragmatic standpoint, the arguments about the Constitutionality of government intervention in health care is merely academic–the majority of politicians and Americans just don’t care about the Constitution. Given that, PCR argues that single-payer is the least worst option. Here is the argument that seems to support that:
“What the U.S. needs is a single-payer not-for-profit health system that pays doctors and nurses sufficiently that they will undertake the arduous training and accept the stress and risks of dealing with illness and diseases.
A private health care system worked in the days before expensive medical technology, malpractice suits, high costs of bureaucracy associated with third-party payers, heavy investment in combating fraud and pressure on insurance companies from Wall Street to improve “shareholder returns.”
Despite the rise in premiums, payments to health care providers, such as doctors, appear to be falling along with coverage to policyholders. The system is no longer functional and no longer makes sense. Health care has become an incidental rather than primary purpose of the health care system. Health care plays second fiddle to insurance company profits and salaries to bureaucrats engaged in fraud prevention and discovery. There is no point in denying coverage to one-sixth of the population in the name of saving a nonexistent private free market health care system.”
P.S. I am not the biggest PCR fan, and I suspect he truly is a lib. But I don’t think it is fair to say that the argument quoted above implies a theoretical rejection of conservative principles.
RedPhillips on 23 Sep 2009 at 4:50 pm #
“From a pragmatic standpoint, the arguments about the Constitutionality of government intervention in health care is merely academic–the majority of politicians and Americans just don’t care about the Constitution.”
I understand this. It is sad but true. In fact, I have long made the point that strict Constitutionalism is probably a 1-2% issue to my more naive friends who seem to believe that if we could just get our message out and not have it suppressed that the masses would embrace it. But because it is not a practical political reality at this time, that makes it essentially a cost free position to hold assuming you are just trying to move the debate and not actually trying to get elected to anything. (The right is radicalizing some, and the number of people talking about the Constitution is growing, so we are having an impact.) Since it is cost free at this point, why give up the moral high ground? Once that moral high ground is conceded, it cannot be retaken or at least can only be retaken with extreme difficulty. This has been the problem with American conservatism from the beginning. It has over time conceded every liberal encroachment, such as the New Deal. Who is to say what would have happened if post New Deal conservatism had continued to rail against the New Deal instead of coming to terms with it? Whatever the outcome, it could hardly be worse than what we have now. Consider my position, “I’m not going down without a fight.”
RedPhillips on 23 Sep 2009 at 5:26 pm #
SLT, to be honest, I have no idea how to fix the current system. It is broken beyond repair. It does a good job of treating people for the most part, but the system as it now exists is impossible to sustain on its own in any kind of free market unsubsidized way because the present subsidies have so distorted and inflated the system. The only way to have a true free market would be to implode the whole thing and return to some sort of medical primitivism.
The medical industry is like the military industrial complex, it exist for its original purpose, treating people or defense respectively, but it also exists for its own perpetuation. Ask yourself how many people you know who work in the health care industry.
PCR is right in his critique that the low income person cannot possibly realistically expect to pay for healthcare in the current system.
But that said, I think Obama Care or single-payer would make the situation worse. A do nothing strategy and sticking with the current system of employer based health insurance is preferable to further mucking things up. Besides my Constitution based objections. Any sort of government run health care will invariably lead to rationing. It has to. There is no other way to limit the inexhaustible demand that “free” health care will generate.
Here are a few things that need to happen. We need more medical schools. The last new medical school was Florida State several years ago now, and before that I believe it was Mercer approx. 20 years ago. The population is growing and we are still turning out early and mid 1900′s levels of docs. This has led to an enormous amount of immigration of doctors to fill short falls. There should be approximately as many American med school grads as there are residency slots, and minimal foreign medical graduates.
Many prescription medicines should be made over the counter and perhaps empowering pharmacists to serve a gate keeping role there for some meds. This is done in some European countries. Also we should empower lower level practitioners (Nurse Practitioners, PAs, nurses) to do some level of unsupervised care. But this would have to be buyer beware. A certain level of competence should be expected, but you couldn’t hold them to MD standards or else it would be lawsuit heaven.
Also, I would give a tax credit (non-refundable) for the private purchase of health care insurance.
roho on 23 Sep 2009 at 10:29 pm #
Conservatives have negotiated and back-tracked so much on social conservatism, as to tell the base to “Get over abortions!”
Maybe it’s time for liberals to tell the “American Bar” to “Get over Tort Reform! It’s comming!”………………No serious discussion on healthcare can move forward untill doctors, trial lawyers, and malpractice insurance are locked up for negotiation.
D B Allyn on 25 Sep 2009 at 12:36 pm #
No matter which outcome prevails, the USA will not survive under communism. In a few years or sooner, the white Euro-Americans will be so discouraged and the mexicans and coloureds will be looting and rioting since their golden goose will now be dead. It is a very ominous situation at best.