This The Hill article provides a glimpse of the probable Dem. strategy for enacting socialized healthcare: incremental legislation over the next two to four years.
A spokesman for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) predicted Monday that the House would “take a major step” toward comprehensive health reform this year, a comment that appears to contrast with a member of her leadership team.
Over the weekend, House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said in a C-SPAN interview that he does not expect a health reform bill to pass Congress in 2009 and prefers to see the issue dealt with “incrementally.”
House Democrats are already taking “incremental steps” toward health reform, Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly wrote in an e-mail before suggesting more sweeping action in the near future.
The House already passed an expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and is working on an economic stimulus bill that includes provisions to shore up the Medicaid program, facilitate displaced workers maintaining their private insurance benefits and allocate funding to other healthcare priorities, Daly noted.
“There are some incremental steps that we are taking — first we did SCHIP, then in our economic recovery package, we have money to help stem the tide of people losing health insurance — coverage for Medicaid and COBRA. There is also money for quality, Health IT, comparative effectiveness and wellness, and money for prevention,” Daly wrote.
“And we will take a major step forward this year to increase the number of people who have healthcare coverage,” Daly wrote.
“Incremental” is an unwelcome and loaded term among would-be health reformers.
"Incremental" is an unwelcome word for advocates of a true free-market healthcare system, too.
Medicaid, Medicare and SCHIP (I'm intentionally leaving veterans' programs out of this picture), once initially implemented, have continued to expand at an incremental basis. So long as Democrats continue to receive enough Republican votes merely to pass each upcoming spending increase, they will realize their ultimate goal: universal government healthcare.
We know the excuses GOP legislators will make, because we've heard them all before. Some Republican legislators will vote for an expansion of Medicaid benefits because it's "for the children." Other Republicans will vote to expand Medicare so they aren't portrayed as kicking senior citizens to the curb. SCHIP is for working families, and so on.
The sector of the Republican Party in favor of Real-ID, NSA/TSA/(insert branch here) databases, etc. may indeed relish spending money on health care databases. We shouldn't tell private companies how to operate, but with COBRA the end justify the means.
Heck, Medicare Part D was even pushed by key Republicans.
Perhaps we should follow Great Britian's example and spend more money on "wellness" by creating a Department of Food Police. In a 2006 article about U.S. food police, the NY Times noted:
A look at what's happening on the state level confirms this. In Arkansas, for instance, children's report cards now include their B.M.I., or body mass index, along with their grades. The governor, Mike Huckabee recently lost more than 100 pounds and is passionate about stopping the "obesity epidemic." Maryland is considering a similar standard.
It doesn't take a majority of Republican votes to push us closer to a complete government takeover of our healthcare system. It only takes a handful of votes here or there for the Dems to gain a bit more ground as each new expansion of government healthcare control passes through Congress.
I doubt the Democrats will try another Clinton-style heathcare grab. Why should they? They lost on Hillarycare but they'll continue to win new ground, year after year, with their incremental approach.
And there isn't a strong enough consensus inside the GOP to stop them.