Where are the Fiscal Conservatives in Healthcare?
Where are the Fiscal Conservatives? The Republican Party seems to have none left any more.
I’m posting this as a response to a Paul Krugman editorial, G.O.P. Cruelty Is a Pre-existing Condition, because the comments section is closed.
A fiscal conservative, interested in economic development, would invest strategically in a healthy, skilled, and more productive workforce, but Republicans are instead taking healthcare away from tens of millions and defunding public education too. So I must now ask, are the true fiscal conservatives now in the Democratic party?
A true fiscal conservative would work to cut healthcare costs in half to match other advanced nations that spend half as much for better outcomes and longevity. Since we currently spend $3.5 trillion/year, such reforms would save more than $1.5 trillion every year. But instead of that, the GOP enacted tax cuts for the uber-rich that will cost $2 trillion over 10 years, increase the national debt, and increase pressure to cut social programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
Rather than being fiscally conservative, the Republican Party now seems to be filled with cowardly accomplices to mass murder. I’m talking about Political Genocide as voter suppression, because “dead people don’t vote.”
Harvard Medical School researchers studied mortality and health insurance and found that 25% of people without insurance die unnecessary as a result. So, if 20M people lose health insurance with a Republican ACA repeal, 5M would die. On the other hand, if 15M people get new insurance access under the Democrat plan to expand and strengthen the ACA, 3.75M potential voters would live longer. And even more would live longer with effective Universal Healthcare. That’s a GOP problem if these are the people who mostly support Democrats.
So where are the FISCAL Conservatives? There seems to be more of them in the Democratic Party these days.
Conservative by Another Definition
If being “conservative” means preserving the status quo, then Republicans can clearly claim that label, even if their proposals are not fiscally conservative. In healthcare at least, the medical industry has worked to strengthen this position, preserve massive profits, and avoid progressive reforms. They’d even like to return to the good old days before the ACA, have pushed to repeal it, and must like Trump’s efforts to sabotage it.
Progressive Democrats, by contrast, view healthcare as a basic right and want a single-payer universal healthcare system like the other advanced nations. Their bold proposals are based on a Medicare-for-All concept, but even that won’t be enough to cut costs in half and save the $1.5 trillion/year that I keep saying is possible, if only we can understand Why American Healthcare is So Expensive in the first place. But at least the progressive proposals are a good start.
Between those two extremes are moderate Democrats and Republicans who would prefer to take baby steps and fix what ever is broken in our current system but leave the rest as is. “If if ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” they’d say. This seems acceptable to the medical industry and gives them plenty of room to negotiate through lobbying. Fixing ACA problems is the approach Nancy Pelosi is taking, starting with reigning in high drug prices. Some Republicans also prefer this more cautious (conservative) approach, because it helps avoid harm from radical changes.
