Health care reform: Good policy v. good politics
In a recent letter to Obama, 23 prominent economists identified four provisions that they said "can go a long way toward delivering better health care, and better value, to Americans." They are: ensuring that reform doesn't add to the federal deficit; creating an independent commission to bring Medicare costs under control; discouraging high-cost insurance plans by taxing them; and changing the incentives in medicine so that doctors and hospitals are paid not for how much treatment they give but for how well it works.
Many of these economists - as well as other health experts - are watching in dismay as the legislation's reforms and cost-saving measures are whittled away by powerful special interests. "It may be that the intersection between what economists consider good policy and [what Washington considers] good politics is very small," says Stanford University's Alan Garber, an organizer of the group who signed the letter to Obama.
