Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Look Who’s Praising Socialized Medicine

This from Dr. Krugman - follow link to original
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http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/

Look Who’s Praising Socialized Medicine

MItt Romney’s inability to stay on script is really getting surreal. Today he lavished praise on the Israeli health care system, which has indeed done a fine job of controlling costs while maintaining high quality. But as everyone who knows anything about it quickly pointed out, the secret of Israel’s success is … intense government involvement. It’s a single-payer system; but unlike Medicare, it also sets a budget per capita (adjusted for health status), so that the nonprofit plans are in effect forced to set priorities for treatment and also negotiate hard over provider payments; think of it as price controls plus death panels.
Romney’s remarks here fit the classic (Galbraith?) definition of a gaffe: it’s when a politician accidentally tells the truth. The truth in this case is that America’s uniquely privatized system is also uniquely expensive and inefficient; health care is one area in which the public sector does it better than the private sector, and in which free-market doctrine is just a dangerous fantasy.
But of course Romney can’t admit that.
And like everyone else, I’m really beginning to wonder about him. All he has to do to avoid creating a mess while on this trip is to stay bland and talk in generalities; instead, he’s causing international incidents every step of the way. Something is very wrong with what’s going on inside that impressive head of hair.

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