I'm not usually in agreement with Mickey Kaus, but the essence of his argument here--that fixing Social Security now would make it much harder for Democrats to eventually reach the goal of universal health care, and therefore any proposal that would do so should be left to die on the vine--makes sense. Every other "real" country in the world has already accepted that health care is best provisioned in a centralized fashion, and the American people appear to realize this. Their realization will only grow with time, as will the percentage of Americans already being covered by the government through Medicare as the population ages.
But a single-payer system that works will be expensive, even if less expensive than the mess we have now, and may require some of the money the current Social Security fixes on the table would use. As Kaus says:
Would you take a deal that gave us universal Medicare-style health insurance if the price was cutting down Social Security into a mere program of earned insurance against poverty? It seems like a no-brainer to me. But it's only possible if Social security is perceived as in need of fixing--even better, if it's in crisis!So let the crisis roll...right into 2009! Hillary, health care--it's gonna be like 1993 all over again!
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