Ezra Klein asks, why Mike Huckabee wants to waste money on Medicare
What is comparative-effectiveness review? There are two answers to this question. The right answer, and Mike Huckabee’s answer.
Mike Huckabee’s answer is that comparative-effectiveness review is the seed from which “the poisonous tree of death panels will grow,” which is, if not a sensical image, at least a vivid one.
So at the moment, the Republican Party’s position is that Medicare and Medicaid cannot use studies measuring the effectiveness of different medical treatments when deciding what to cover or not cover. Another way to say that is they’ve decided against saving money by making better decisions about what to buy. Their remaining options are to save money by paying doctors and hospitals less than things currently cost, or to save money by giving seniors and Medicaid recipients less than they currently need. With smart rationing off the table, dumb rationing is all we have left.
For obvious reasons Ezra, Krugman and others will want to beat up on Huckabee and his ilk for staking out a technocratically silly position.
However, I think they are missing the larger picture. Mike Huckabee wants Medicare to “waste money” because Mike Huckabee does not actually believe in limited government, is a fan of the welfare state and an unabashed believer in the wonders of modern medicine.
Via McClatchy a quote that strikes me as a good summation of Mike Huckabee
He always talked against taxes, but he wanted all these spending programs," former Democratic state Rep. Boyd Hickinbotham said. "So he’d treat taxes like a rotten egg. He’d hold his nose, but he liked being able to spend the money.
Movement Progressives should stop and think for a moment about what is happening in America before they go and AEI themselves. That’s when a formerly innovative and insightful group fails to recognize that they have won the war of ideas, can’t stop lashing out at old enemies and subsequently turns into a bastion of harpies shell of its former self.
Right now Mike Huckabee is leading the Republican field. His principle opponent still cites Universal Health Care as his signature achievement. This is not an encouraging sign for the supporters of smaller government.
Huckabee might have signed a no new taxes pledge but where is Mike Huckabee’s heart? Is it drowning government in a bathtub along side Grover Norquist? Or is it better expressed in this passage from his book, from Hope to Higher Ground
I listened to countless young couples pour out their souls as they struggled to get their marriages in survival mode when confronted with overextended debt, sudden and unexpected unemployment and loos of income, or the anxieties of having a child with severe disabilities.
My experiences helped me to better understand that good government is not about policies, but about the people whose lives are going to be touched.
Mike Huckabee isn’t cynically trying to trick voters into abandoning the welfare state. He is trying to convince folks, not least among them himself, that you can have a bigger better welfare state with conservative Christian principles.
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Sunday ~ March 13th, 2011 at 1:37 am
Sean
So is Huckabe lying to his conservative base when he says that cheaper Medicare is “the poisonous tree of death panels will grow”?
Is he a “mole”, is he trying to “convert” them to the idea of a civilized government, “from within”?
Or is he just a hypocrite who is trying to maximize the efficiency of his message, regardless of whether it actually is true?
You decide.
Sunday ~ March 13th, 2011 at 9:24 am
OGT
Romney has a much more tortured relationship to RomneyCare on the campaign trail than you’re indicating here. Though, given Romney’s weather vane like abilities, that’s the place to watch to see where the GOP zeitgeist is heading.
Plus, have you seen the House budget? Cutting Head Start, for example, hardly seems like a group reconciled to the existence of a robust safety net or government support for equal opportunity.
Sunday ~ March 13th, 2011 at 4:47 pm
Econ Skeptic
There is a big difference between embracing universal health care and other welfare-state attributes as a matter of principle and embracing them as a matter of expediency, according to whatever polls well currently. If Huckabeen and his ilk has done the former, there would be absolutely no debate about keeping the ACA: people would just be working hard to improve it. Instead, we get the mess we’re in where Huckabee’s and Romney’s (and the Tea Party’s) ideological posture is basically incoherent (a.k.a. “keep Government out of my Medicare”) and one has no real idea what they’d actually do if elected. One might justify their behavior by saying that it ain’t so bad when politicians try to be responsive to voters preferences, but the truth is that this is a dynamic relationship and leading politicians have a lot of ability to influence voter preferences. Currently, that ability is very much being abused by the right wing.
Monday ~ March 14th, 2011 at 9:33 am
Morning Must Reads: Loss - Swampland - TIME.com
[...] Smith argues movement liberals won the war of ideas on social welfare. They seem to have lost on taxes and short-term [...]
Monday ~ March 14th, 2011 at 10:00 am
Ashley
Background: I’m African-American, from the South, and a registered independent. I’ve also had the pleasure of working with Mike Huckabee during his tenure as Governor of Arkansas.
It’s unfortunate that Huckabee is being painted into a corner, by conservatives and liberals. I believe that, second to Obama, he could be the type of leader that our fiscally struggling nation needs.
Take an honest look at the work he’s already done: 1) increased the services available to Medicaid patients in Arkansas in an effort to reduce long-term costs, 2) encouraged the racial intergration of Arkansas’s public schools, 3) adopted a personal platform to live healthier and provide healthier school lunches in the midst of a national obesity epidemic, and 4) provided education and social supports to TANF/welfare reciepents in an effort to eliminate the cycle of poverty that so many of America’s working poor grapple with.
I’ve provided some examples below:
1) While in office Governor Huckabee launched an initiative to proactively provide counseling and health management resources to Medicaid recipients with Type II Diabetes. This effort considerably reduced Medicaid costs. Read more: http://www.southerngrowth.com/pubs/pubs_pdfs/community_index.pdf
2) Encouraged the racial intergration of Arkansas’s public schools. Mike Huckabee endorsed a federal takeover of Arkansas public schools after the legislature was unwilling to develop a plan to merge school districts.
The examples are numerous, just google some of the topics above for more detail.
actually practiced what he preached. He ra
Monday ~ March 14th, 2011 at 1:26 pm
Elvis Elvisberg
Well, Ashley & Karl Smith, I think the difference here is between Gov. Mike Huckabee, Republican governor from 1996-2007, an Republican TV personality and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee in 2011.
When he was a governor, he had to enact actual policies. Now that he’s out of power, he, like the GOP/Tea Party, has abandoned all policy views, instead opting to hurl insults at those in charge.
Right now, Huckabee wants to curry favor with the mood of the GOP base. So he feels compelled to imply that the president is a Kenyan Muslim America-hater. He pretends to believe that a milquetoast health insurance reform plan– originally conceived by the Heritage Foundation and proposed by Bob Dole– is socialist fascism because it was enacted by Democrats.
It’s not at all clear that movement progressives have won anything. Republicans have no policy beliefs. They just like winning. So when they saw an opportunity to attack the president for proposing cuts to Medicare spending, they attacked. Now they’re attacking Medicare spending. There’s no way to look at the nihilism coming from the GOP and declare that progressives have won any arguments.
Wednesday ~ March 16th, 2011 at 1:35 pm
Joshua
Avastin Super-Responders.