Radical Health Care Reform

For all the talk about how radical this reform is, how it is nothing less than a “socialist take-over of one-sixth of the economy,” what we have is a very moderate plan. A plan so reasonable that it is endorsed by the AARP and the AMA, and supported by Big Pharma and hospitals and unions as well. For most of the process even health insurers quietly accept the reforms.

Yet because Republicans refuse to add their votes to the bill it is described as extreme. The truth is that the health care reform bill includes many Republican ideas. It is essentially the Massachusetts health reform plan implemented by Republican Mitt Romney with added cost controls. The Massachusetts plan, in turn, was a version of Republican John Chaffee’s counter-proposal to the Clinton health care proposal of the early 1990s.