Apparently, today is Outrage Day. When is the Two Minutes Hate? In his Washington Post column Fareed Zakaria is outraged that the new cadre of progressives don’t believe the same things that the Democratic moderates of 25 years ago did:
Universal health care is an important moral and political goal. But the U.S. system is insanely complex, and getting from here to single-payer would probably be so disruptive and expensive that it’s not going to happen. There is a path to universal coverage that is simpler: Switzerland has one of the best health-care systems in the world, and it’s essentially Obamacare with a real mandate. No one on the left is talking about such a model, likely because it feels too much like those incremental policies of the past.
Or consider the tax proposals being tossed around on the left, including a wealth tax championed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). I understand the appeal of tapping into those vast accumulations of billionaire loot. But there is a reason nine of the 12 European countries that instituted similar taxes have repealed them in the last 25 years. They massively distort economic activity, often incentivizing people to hide assets, devalue them and create dummy corporations. Faced with a wealth tax, most rich people would likely value and transfer assets the questionable way that Fred Trump did in passing his fortune on to his children.
There are smarter, better ways to address inequality — raise the capital gains tax to the same level as income taxes; increase the estate tax; and get rid of the massive loopholes that make the U.S. tax code one of the most complex and corrupt in the world. But again, this is less stirring stuff than burning the billionaires.
But they aren’t smarter, better, more experienced or even well-informed. They don’t care what works and the only experience that may be gleaned from other countries in which they have any interest is whatever promotes their ideas and objectives of today. Welcome to tne New Order. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
Bill Clinton was as much a member of a dying breed as Nelson Rockefeller was as a northeastern liberal Republican. Clinton is what used to be called a “‘bidness’ Democrat”. They’ve become Republicans practically everywhere in today’s South.
As an aside Switzerland is so different from the United States it is absolutely no model for the United States for anything. It is a tiny, very prosperous country with few immigrants. It hasn’t attacked any other country in 150 years but every adult male joins the military, is in the reserves for most of his adult life, and keeps an automatic weapon at home. It maintained its neutrality during WWII. It has a very nearly unique system of family structure, very different from our absolute nuclear families. It operates almost entirely by consensus. All legislation of importance is turned over to the people for referendum. Women got the vote a little over 40 years ago. Recently, the Swiss rejected a national mininum income.
Meanwhile, partisan politics makes strange bedfellows.
My daughter has been living and working in Germany for more than 15 years. The German system is a multipayer, multiprovider system. People must buy health insurance, but they can choose any company. If you are employed, your employer pays some of the premium. Unemployed get subsidized insurance. Everyone is covered.
My daughter is very happy with the quality of care and its ready availability. There are no long waits for “elective” procedures, as in Britain and Canada.
It is expensive. The pension plan and the health insurance amount to 30% of her gross income.
So here we are, several years into ACA and still 15% of the population don’t have insurance. Two-thirds of them likely don’t need it, but the one-third who are the working poor do. The whole Obama fiasco failed them.
For some reason the Democrats are committed to the British system, which is about the worst public health system in the First World, substantially inferior to ours. Why is a good question.
The average wage for a specialist in Germany is $90,000/year. The average wage for a specialist in the United States is $330,000/year with the wages for administrators, technicians, etc. commensurate. The median income in the U. S. is about 30% higher than the median in Germany—not 300%. In other words the German system here would result in your daughter’s paying 100% of her income for health care and pension. Uwe Reinhardt summarized the issues with our system succinctly: “It’s the prices, stupid.”