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Why it's so difficult to pass health care reform.
September 2, 2009 12:27 AM

Paul Krugman has two really great contributions to this debate and why it's so dang difficult to get anything done. The first comes from one of his regular columns, entitled, "Missing Richard Nixon":

Many of the retrospectives on Ted Kennedy's life mention his regret that he didn't accept Richard Nixon's offer of a bipartisan health care deal. The moral some commentators take from that regret is that today's health care reformers should do what Mr. Kennedy balked at doing back then, and reach out to the other side.

But it's a bad analogy, because today's political scene is nothing like that of the early 1970s. In fact, surveying current politics, I find myself missing Richard Nixon.

Say what??

No, I haven't lost my mind. Nixon was surely the worst person other than Dick Cheney ever to control the executive branch.

Ahh...that's more like it. Krugman goes on to explain:

As many people have pointed out, Nixon's proposal for health care reform looks a lot like Democratic proposals today. In fact, in some ways it was stronger. Right now, Republicans are balking at the idea of requiring that large employers offer health insurance to their workers; Nixon proposed requiring that all employers, not just large companies, offer insurance.

Nixon also embraced tighter regulation of insurers, calling on states to "approve specific plans, oversee rates, ensure adequate disclosure, require an annual audit and take other appropriate measures." No illusions there about how the magic of the marketplace solves all problems.

He finishes by talking about the current Republican party and how they are controlled by the far-right-wing members of the GOP:

Part of the answer is that the right-wing fringe, which has always been around -- as an article by the historian Rick Perlstein puts it, "crazy is a pre-existing condition" -- has now, in effect, taken over one of our two major parties. Moderate Republicans, the sort of people with whom one might have been able to negotiate a health care deal, have either been driven out of the party or intimidated into silence. Whom are Democrats supposed to reach out to, when Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who was supposed to be the linchpin of any deal, helped feed the "death panel" lies?

He finishes by pointing out the second reason it's harder to get health-care reform today: corporate bribes (a.k.a. lobbyists).

Krugman's other contribution comes from his blog, entitled "Horse-race reporting":


1. It's easier to research horse-race stuff. To report on policy, a reporter has to master the policy issues fairly well. That's not easy, especially for journalists who have specialized in up close and personal rather than wonkery -- and policy issues change from year to year. To do a horse-race piece, you just call up the usual suspects on your Rolodex, and have a bunch of "one Democratic insider said" quotes. That's also, I suspect, why many policy stories just consist of dueling quotes from supposed experts.

2. It's easier to write horse-race stuff. Even if you know the policy issues, writing them so you don't totally lose your audience is really tricky -- I've spent years trying to learn the craft, and it still often comes out way too dry. On the other hand, horse-race stuff can be full of personal details.

3. It's safer to cover the race. If you cover policy, and go beyond dueling quotes, you have to make some factual assertions -- and people who prefer to believe otherwise will get mad. Newsweek's Sharon Begley wrote a piece about what actually is and isn't in Obamacare, and got mail from readers denouncing her and wishing her an early death. As I pointed out the other day, I'm getting a lot of hate mail -- and I mean obscenities, death wishes, and all that, not strongly worded disagreements -- for writing about Swiss health care and budget arithmetic. Much safer to report on ups and downs in the conventional wisdom.

Indeed, as he finishes, "The upshot, of course, is that we"re having a crucial national policy debate in which the great bulk of the news coverage tells people nothing at all about the policy issues," it seems nearly impossible to engage the American public in an adult debate about the pros and cons of health care reform...that is, if you only follow the horse-racing facet of this debate on the mainstream media...


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