A time whose idea has come Gephardt's gamble
Jr, E J Dionne
OF SEVERAL MINDS E.J. DIONNE Jr. A TIME WHOSE IDEA HAS COME Dick Gephardt offers voters a choice Some of the Democrats running for president have found an issue that" s gotten them really worked...
...Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor, called the idea in question "totally impractical" and "much too expensive...
...And Gephardt's plan won't satisfy those who think the country needs to move away from employer-based health insurance...
...They can't have both...
...Harnessing the entire Bush tax cut to health care would reduce the Democrats' opportunity to campaign as the party of balanced budgets...
...2003, Washington Post Writers Group...
...He would repeal all of Bush's tax cuts and direct the proceeds to helping employees, businesses, and governments to cope with rising health-care costs...
...Gephardt would subsidize health insurance for uncovered Americans with particularly low incomes...
...For one thing, there is a constituency for fiscal responsibility and many Americans have figured out that Bush's tax polities guarantee a fiscal train wreck by the time the baby boomers start retiring...
...First, that relieving employers of a larger share of their heath costs will inevitably translate into new investment, higher wages, or both...
...A TIME WHOSE IDEA HAS COME Dick Gephardt offers voters a choice Some of the Democrats running for president have found an issue that" s gotten them really worked up...
...Yes, universal health insurance will cost a lot of money, but so does Bush's tax plan...
...And, yes, big health-care plans don't have a great record of political success...
...By Gephardt's estimate, this would provide fiscally strapped states and localities with $172 billion in relief during the plan's first three years...
...Subsidies targeted to particular groups might simply draw those groups away from employer-based plans and increase the government's long-term costs...
...His core idea is to build on the current employer-based insurance system by essentially doubling the current federal tax subsidy to companies that provide health coverage...
...If we are going to dedicate hundreds of billions of dollars to a cause, which cause should it be...
...Sure, there are objections to Gephardt's approach...
...Gephardt would offer voters a plain choice: They can have Bush's tax cuts, or they can have secure health coverage...
...the particular importance of making the government solvent by the time the baby boomers retire...
...Yes, it further subsidizes Americans who are already insured...
...He has drawn a dean, dear line across American politics by challenging Bush on precisely the issue that should be at the heart of the domestic debate in 2004...
...And a plan designed to cover everyone will minimize the problem of perverse incentives...
...We tried that before," he said, and "it just fell apart...
...These guys were not responding with fierce partisanship to a George W. Bush initiative...
...the imperative of avoiding cutbacks in this or that program...
...They were going after one of their own, dismissing Congressman Dick Gephardt's sweeping proposal to guarantee health insurance coverage to almost all Americans...
...Before Gephardt gave his health-care speech on April 23, Democrats were offering many rationales for resisting Bush's tax cuts: the general need for fiscal responsibility...
...Bush has dedicated himself to the proposition that anything that's wrong with the American economy can be cured by large tax cuts, preferably directed toward the "investor class," that is, the wealthy...
...Not wishing to swell the wave of publicity Gephardt won for introducing the first Big New Idea into the 2004 campaign, his other opponents left the work of criticism largely to nameless lieutenants...
...For companies that don't now provide coverage, his plan would require them to accept the tax-credit break and offer their employees insurance...
...the sheer unfairness of lavishing so many benefits on the best-off Americans...
...Dean, a physician who has been saying sensible things about health care for months, wants new money spent primarily on expanding help to the uninsured...
...Unlike the Clintons, Gephardt has consdously avoided remaking the entire health-care system...
...But Gephardt, the former House Democratic leader, has already succeeded...
...Florida Senator Bob Graham offered a worldly-wise retort...
...Gephardt has shouted a loud "No...
...If he's done nothing else, Gephardt has broken the spell of the Clinton Syndrome, the affliction that sees all efforts to achieve universal health insurance coverage as doomed to the same fate as ClintonCare...
...Good reasons all, but all rather abstract...
...Gephardt will stand or fall on his health plan, but at least he'll stand for something...
...That was Graham's point in his inevitable reference to the health-care adventures of a certain couple named Clinton...
...Yes, the plan would be expensive...
...Still, Gephardt is right about two things...
...He'd also have Washington underwrite 60 percent of health insurance costs, not just for the private sector, but also for employees of state and local governments...
...He would allow those aged fifty-five to sixty-four-an expensive group to cover-to buy into Medicare...
...Gephardt's own numbers peg its costs in 2007 at $247 billion...
Vol. 130 • May 2003 • No. 9
