Remember when Obama accused McCain of wanting to change America's beloved employer-based health insurance system? Obama was going to enhance it and improve it.
If so, listen to the piece from NPR's Day to Day piece today on the pending nomination of Tom Daschele (listen to audio linked on the page) to Health and Human Services. Ron Elving, NPR's senior Washington editor, states flatly that the problem is employer-based health insurance and says that a single-payer plan is the obviously simple solution. Elving sees Daschele's nomination as an indication that Obama intends to move away from employer-based health insurance and toward a single-payer system, albeit less suddenly than the Clintons tried to.
At no point does Elving even mention Obama's specific health care proposals, as it's clear enough to him that whatever specifics Obama offered were so much campaign window-dressing. The real substance will be in the legislative process, in which every Congressperson will be hang her or his special ornament on the Christmas tree of nationalized health insurance.
We appreciate the frankness of this journalist's analysis. And we wonder only why the President-elect is not being accused of having practiced the politics of fear and deception.
But let's make no mistake: both parties recognize that the employer-based provision of health insurance is problematic. One party wants to encourage market-based solutions by removing tax incentives for employer-based insurance. The other wants a government-based solution.
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