An Open Letter To Andre Carson

After thinking about it for a few days, I recently sent this to Indiana's 7th District House Representative, Andre Carson:

I'm writing to you regarding recent news reports that progressive legislators in the House are considering not supporting the Senate Health Care Reform Bill (HCR). As a constituent who voted for you in 2008, I would urge you not to make this mistake.

Yes, the Senate HCR bill is greatly flawed. Yes, it doesn't go nearly far enough in fixing the disaster that is the US health care system. Yes, the reason why we are faced with the current dilemma is the fault of the Senate, not the House. But it is only the House that can save us. It is only the House that can see to it that the last several months were not wasted. It is only the House that can pass a bill, that while flawed, will still materially improve the lives of millions of Americans.

I find myself thinking of another flawed bill, a bill that at the time was rightly criticized for not going far enough. I'm thinking of the 1957 Civil Rights Act. And I'm thinking of how Lyndon Johnson argued that passing the 1957 CRA would break down the wall that had held civil rights legislation back for decades. Johnson said that passing the 1957 CRA would open the door for better legislation later. Johnson was of course proven right.

I urge you and your fellow House progressives to follow Johnson's example and not turn away from this chance to make history.

Fiscal Responsibility

Let's say you were shown the following graph:

And that I told you the dollar amount on the left is .. say... average tax rate per person for various countries. On the right the line goes to.. let's call it a "dollars the taxpayer sees back in services". Obviously an upward sloping line would be good, and a downward sloping line would be bad.

Now let's say that the thickness of the line represented the number of government services used by the average taxpayer, so a thick line would be good and a thin line bad. Make sense?

By any estimation, the United States in that graph is horrifyingly inefficient, and conservatives would be SCREAMING that the government needs to be trimmed, that taxes need to be cut and that LIBERALS ARE TO BLAME (of course).

But what would they say if the actual context of that graph was shown?

What the fa-hells? The United States pays 1.65 times more than the next highest country in public + private health care expenditures per capita, but has less than average life expectancy at birth. On top of that, we have very few doctor visits per year.

Wouldn't anyone who truly believes in fiscal responsibility say that our current system is horrifyingly broken, and that we should investigate alternate models that obviously can produce much better results?

What is fiscally responsible about opposing major healthcare reforms*? Beuller? Beuller? Anyone?

Graphs found on a post at the always excellent Sadly, No!.