An Interesting Perspective on the Healthcare Debate…

This guy James P. Pinkerton showed up in the Politico.com Arena with some perspectives on the healthcare debate that I found interesting. Hes been on fox news numerous times and worked in both the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations, so it’s no secret that he shoots from the right hip. However, he sheds light on how the entire political debate is nether geared toward nor likely to produce any increase in the quality of care available right now (i.e. more cures, better treatments). In fact, it will probably stifle these innovations in the name of cost control. James writes:

“The fifth reason for the Democrat’s difficulty is the basic flaw in the intellectual model: “health insurance reform” is not the goal of most Americans. What the American people really want is cures. You don’t go to the doctor because you can, because the government has given you some card entitling you to low-tech care. Nor do you go to the doctor to show off the intellectual ingenuity of your health savings account. Instead, you go to the doctor to get better. Ask yourself: Where in the Obama pitch is there any discussion of actually curing anything? (One doesn’t hear much “cure talk” among Republicans, either, but they, being the minority, aren’t the issue right now. In the next Congress, or the one after that, they might regain the majority; we can revisit them then.) ”

“The story of 2009 is the apotheosis of the left-liberal idea–inflected by “Club of Rome”-ish environmentalism and residual enthusiasm for barefoot doctors–that we have enough health, or maybe even too much health. So don’t worry about the creation of health; in fact, the creation of new medicines needs to be restrained, in the name of “cost control. The main imperative is the redistribution of health, not the creation of health. “

Another interesting point is the difficulty of developing a welfare state in a multicultural society because they usually lack a sense of community. He writes:

“The broader issue crunching down on the Democrats is welfare-state liberalism vs. multiculturalism. As Harvard’s Robert Putnam has noted,along with many others, the communitarian ethos that upholds the welfare state is based substantially on ethnic trust and national commonality, and those bonds of affection and unity have a way of breaking down amidst multiculturalism. Welfare states thrive in homogenous countries, they are smaller and less expansive in heterogenous countries–and as for really heterogenous countries, well, they have a way of becoming ex-countries, viz. the USSR, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and so on. “

Read all of Mr. Pinkerton’s Arena posts here.