The amount of conservative complaining about Governor Romney’s health care plan has been nothing short of amazing to me. If you replace the words “health care” in the bill with “Medicare Part D” or “Medicare Advantage” you would have the same sort of vehicle for expanding coverage and promoting competition. Sure, there are things not to like about the Romney plan, including the employer fine and things it does not do, like provide enough low cost, non community rating choices. But how about fighting to fix those? As for the whining that it will be a model elsewhere, how about building our own models?
Finally, conservatives need some to educate themselves about what will really save health care dollars or at least make them more valuable. Health care financing models are only means to an end. The tidal wave of retirement needs to be reversed or transformed by enhancing health or prolonging productivity. Better health and longer life through more personalized medicine and preventive technologies are the key to revolutionizing health care. We need to start talking about and developing approaches that reward and capture these innovations. And we need both the guts and brains to carry the fight through or just get out of the way. It’s easy to gripe, hard to lead, harder to win.
