The Health Care Blog: Sympathy for the blue devils?

By Matthew Holt I do have some vague sympathy for the Blue Dogs, the group of mostly red-state Democrats who have to pretend that they care about fiscal responsibility. They, like me, think that we shouldn't be increasing taxes on the non-health sector to pay for universal coverage. Unlike me they think that we should be reducing any commitment to universal coverage by reducing the level at which subsidies for people mandated to buy health care coverage cut off—which will leave us in a situation with lots of people who forgo coverage because they can’t afford it. I of course think that we should be finding the money to cover the uninsured from within the 16% of GDP we already spend on health care and then ratchet that overall number down, but then again I don’t have to get elected to Congress. But I do have one modest question. Where were the dogs/devils’ concerns about the deficit when George Bush was borrowing for the future to pay for income and dividend tax rebates for the very wealthy, by invading Iraq and hiding the accounting, and by creating the boondoggle that was the Medicare Modernization Act. Now it’s late at night and I’m not going to go chasing voting records from 2001–3. But I sure have my guess…. The Health Care Blog: Sympathy for the blue devils?