Avik Roy is working towards Obamacare alternatives, but has always supported some form of universal coverage, about which this blog harbors doubts. Perhaps much in the same way that human rights and human rights institutions have become part of the foreign policy institutional landscape, so too could universal coverage become part of the furniture. Big, heavy furniture.
A healthy skepticism might recognize that such a delivery system could likely create too tantalizing a prize for Leftward ideological interests and perhaps too immovable an institutional object to remain nimble and responsive to We The People over time.
Nevertheless, Roy is really working on rising health-care cost problems, and it addresses many of the flawed incentives and ridiculous complexity and overreach of the ACA:
‘One of the fundamental flaws in the conservative approach to health care policy is that few—if any—Republican leaders have articulated a vision of what a market-oriented health care system would look like. Hence, Republican proposals on health reform have often been tactical and political—in opposition to whatever Democrats were pitching—instead of strategic and serious.
Those days must come to an end. The problems with our health care system are too great. Health care is too expensive for the government, and too expensive for average Americans.’
Bing West at The National Review on the Islamic State, and possible options:
‘As war author Karl Marlantes has written, don’t treat a human life as a bargaining chip, unless you are willing to be that chip. Too many policymakers and generals think of violence, if they think of it at all, as a negotiating tool.’
If we go in with guns blazing, aren’t we aligning ourselves with Iran and their proxy war in Iraq and Syria and goals for nuclear domination? I mean, as far as nuclear negotiations, we’re already out on a limb with an increasingly desperate American President and a repressive authoritarian regime in which the Ayatollah has final say over a very real divide between Iranian and American interests.
Perhaps we have interests to let both sides fight it out. This could weaken both Tehran and IS. We could help arm the Kurds and see if the branches of the Peshmerga are up to the task of battling IS, try and have Maliki’s departure not devolve into a bloody mess, keep channels open with the Turks, Jordan, Lebanon and…develop something vaguely representing leadership and protection and advancement of our interests and alliances.
Lead!
But how aggressively?
Meanwhile, given the extreme lunacy and violence of IS against the Yazidis, Iraqi Christians, and others in their path, and the clear security threat they post to Western interests, even the humanitarian interventionists and the American public are beginning to see the tatters of current foreign policy and the fires raging throughout the Middle-East.
On that note, it’s nice to relax and read about another part of the world, even if it has an old Communist structure in place. Michael Totten visited Vietnam:
‘Some parts of Hanoi are a bit messy, but aside from the outdated rat’s nest of electrical wires, its messes are the kind you make in your house when you’re in the middle of a remodeling project. Parts of the Old Quarter still look a little decayed, but even there the decay is like a holdover from the past that’s being blotted out with one high-end boutique store after another.’