One way of thinking of health-care reform is, as David Brooks put it in his Tuesday column, that it presents “a basic philosophical choice.” I disagree. I think it’s a policy question.
Various models present us with substantial evidence of the benefits and drawbacks to the different choices we can make. Unfortunately, those models don’t present us with substantial evidence as to the benefits of the choices we would like to make. And that’s when we get philosophical.Brooks gets "philosophical" in discussing health care reform because the empirical evidence doesn't back up his private market biases. That's largely where the GOP is coming from these days. Ideology and wishful thinking trumps reality-based problem solving.
Read Klein's entire column on the VHA below - "When socialism works in America" - it's a breath of fresh air in a stale and increasingly dishonest debate between pragmatic policy choices and promises of unicorns that exist in a land of dreams:
