For Health Care Skeptics

A nice graphical representation of the benefits of the Senate bill from the folks at Think Progress’s Wonk Room:

Sixty

Reid got there, and it’s a staggering achievement.

Politically speaking, I think Jonathan Chait has the most interesting take on what happened. Over the summer, during the heyday of the tea parties, it looked like health care reform was doomed, or at least eviscerated. Obama’s insistence on a bipartisan bill gave Republicans free rein to negotiate in bad faith. And boy did they.

Would you look at how that turned out! As Chait writes, “The Republicans eschewed a halfway compromise and put all their chips on an all or nothing campaign to defeat health care and Obama’s presidency. It was an audacious gamble. They lost.” A gamble for which we should be forever grateful.

Of course it’s not a perfect bill. Did you expect it to be? If so, there’s a bridge I’d like to sell you. (It goes To Nowhere.) But the package we got is certainly better than nothing; it’s better than what we could have gotten if the GOP hadn’t been so brazen; and it lays the groundwork for incremental improvement. Here’s what’s in it now. Marc Ambinder—one of the smartest observers in Washington—even thinks that what the President will sign, after conference, will be more progressive than the Senate bill:

The bill that Obama signs will be “better” from the standpoint of liberal activists than the bill that the Senate is going to pass. It will contain more subsidies…probably some version of a trigger for some sort of insurance competitive mechanism…a reinstatement of mandatory cost controls for hospitals…and even tighter restrictions on insurers.

It is, after all, the most wonderful time of the year. Know hope.

War and Peace, Time and Patience: The Afghan Surge

War stands sui generis among issues of public concern. Nothing is less repugnant, or less reflexive, to the human psyche. But as my generation and that of my parents—the baby boomers—drift further from any direct experience with a “war of necessity,” war’s basic trickiness stands in ever starker relief against the ambivalence of our times. Afghanistan challenges our temperament for violent conflict in ways men like Churchill and Truman, for all their wisdom, could not have foreseen.

There are many arguments against our involvement in Afghanistan—that we entered the conflict in a fever of righteous pique; that we don’t have any clear goals there; that Pakistan is the more important focus; that the country is as unstable now as it was when the Soviets tried to conquer it; that any resultant increase in national security is not worth the cost. These points are all valid and worthy of consideration, and yet all but this last have little bearing on the reality of the day: we are there.

We are there, and like it or not, we have to do something.

We could, of course, withdraw immediately. This sounds like a fine idea to skeptics on the left, many of whom seem not so much pacifist as exhausted. These are the same Democrats, it is important to remember, who happily trumpeted Obama’s commitment to escalating the “real war” in Afghanistan in exchange for withdrawal from Iraq during the 2008 campaign. Fickleness is a friend to all politics.

But unless we are heartless we must ask: withdrawal at what cost? Aside from a small buffer from the remaining external forces (who would see it as betrayal), Afghanistan would almost certainly be plunged into a state of anarchy and bloodshed. Our enemies in the region (al Qaeda, the Taliban) would be empowered. The American military would lose faith in their commander-in-chief, who would have expressly contradicted the recommendations of his top military advisors, not to mention broken a clear campaign promise. The political fallout for President Obama would be sharp; “surrender” would once again be the most popular word on Fox News. And who knows what would happen in Pakistan? Would it respond with a newfound responsibility for the region, or with more of the same corrupt apathy? Would the regime even survive? There is a reason it has been called the “Af-Pak” strategy. What begins in Afghanistan surely does not end there.

Of course we know, based on last week’s decisions, that immediate withdrawal is not a tolerable option for our Commander-in-Chief. Nor should it strike us as a reasonable one. What then?

We could stay forever. The neoconservative right demands empire: how else can we maintain democracy and security in one of the most unstable, corrupt places on the planet? Not until there is a functioning democracy, a competent army, a vanquished Taliban and nary a trace of opium would Bill Kristol and his cynical ilk be happy—nor even then, for they don’t actually care about Afghanistan. They want permanent war.  They want, if we are a bit conspiracy-minded, a reason to keep producing tanks and Kevlar and paying for “private security forces.”  They want a satellite in the Muslim world from which to police the region, sovereignty be damned. And they want, most ludicrous of all, for this permanent American presence to somehow engender good feelings and blot out Islamic terrorism for good. Hearts and minds are one side of COIN [PDF], after all.

So the neoconservative solution doesn’t seem reasonable either. Where does that leave us?

(more…)

Copenhagen Primer: What Exactly Does “Cap and Trade” Mean?

Since the UN Climate Change Conference begins today in Copenhagen, I thought it might be helpful to read up on climate change policy, which is not something in which I feel particularly well-versed. I have a vague idea of what “cap and trade” means, but like most people, I wouldn’t feel comfortable explaining it to someone else.

Lucky for me, Krugman laid out the economics of cap and trade this morning in his characteristically lucid style in a post gently correcting famoust climate scientist James Hansen. The key sentence to understanding how cap and trade is different from a carbon tax:

The only difference is the nature of uncertainty over the aggregate outcome. If you use a tax, you know what the price of emissions will be, but you don’t know the quantity of emissions; if you use a cap, you know the quantity but not the price.

Update: I didn’t mean to argue, by the way, that I completely agree with Krugman on this. In fact, I agree with both of them. While Krugman is right to note that Hansen isn’t exactly correct regarding the economics of cap and trade, he also elides the fact that cap and trade, as opposed to a carbon tax, would require a ton of regulation and policing. Which means it would probably lead to loopholes, speculation, and a host of other ancillary problems. A carbon tax is, from a policy standpoint, the better, simpler, more direct option—but politically it’s a dead end.

I Hate This Hiatus

Apologies for the unexpected break. I’ve just started a new day job and between that and going home for Thanksgiving, time just ran away from me. Regular posting will resume very shortly.