Opinion Pieces Discuss Obama Administration, Health Care
Two newspapers recently printed opinion pieces about the incoming Obama administration and health care. Summaries appear below.
- Thomas Frank, Wall Street Journal: If Democrats are successful in approving a health care overhaul, it could lead to "conservatives' nightmare of permanent defeat" because "conservatives have always dreaded the day that Democrats discover (or rediscover) that there is a happy political synergy between delivering liberal economic reforms and building the liberal movement," Journal columnist Frank writes. "Any kind of national medical program would be so powerfully attractive to working-class voters that it would shift the tectonic plates of the nation's politics," he continues. Frank concludes that if in bringing about health care reform "Barack Obama also happens to nullify decades of conservative propaganda, so much the better for all of us" (Frank, Wall Street Journal, 12/3).
- David Leonhardt, New York Times: President-elect Obama should have a behavioral economist as an adviser who is "specifically charged with translating the lessons of the behavioral revolution into real-world policies," Times columnist Leonhardt writes. The adviser would work "with Medicare officials to improve drug compliance" and think about "how health insurance choices should be presented," among other things, he writes. Leonhardt says behavioral economists are "ideally suited" to help Obama "come up with budget cuts that can reduce government spending without harming the quality of government services." For example, Leonhardt writes that a "behavioral maven" at the Office of Management and Budget and a committee of behavioral economics experts could work on reforming prescription drug policy that gets rid of "perverse incentives" and takes into account "the reasons that patients fail to take their pills." Leonhardt writes, "The promise of behavioral economics is that it can help create a better government, one that wastes less money and does more to improve people's lives" (Leonhardt, New York Times, 12/3).
