Harold Pollack on the heatlh care issue and the campaign: “Our medical and public health system is a mess. It won’t be fixed until we choose a Democrat who can actually win the presidency, and who can then assemble a working majority to get things done.” Pollack thinks that Democrat is named Obama.
Harold Pollack, one of the rising stars of health services research, has a long diary up on Daily Kos reflecting on the state of the health care problem and defending Barack Obama’s approach to dealing with it, including Obama’s reluctance to endorse a mandate. Nut graf:
Our medical and public health system is a mess. It won’t be fixed until we choose a Democrat who can actually win the presidency, and who can then assemble a working majority to get things done.
On the mandate point I think Obama is being somewhat disingenuous. He says that people are uninsured because they can’t afford insurance, but that’s true only of some. Lots of uninsured folks are adverse-selecting young immortals. But it’s not hard to fathom the general-election politics of this, and Obama seems now to be saying that there would be a financial penalty for waiting to join the system.
In any case, Harold’s piece is worth a careful read.
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
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