It?s rare for me to say anything nice about TIME?s main political columnist, but Joe Klein deserves thanks for delivering a column that draws back the curtain on an Obama administration policy that could change our lives drastically:
Economic crises come and go, but entitlements are forever. The Great Depression eventually dissipated, but Franklin Roosevelt’s crown jewel ? the Social Security system ? is still with us. And so it will be with the Obama Administration. The early headlines have been all about the President’s efforts to repair the financial system and jump-start the economy. If he succeeds, he probably will be re-elected. But Barack Obama’s place in history will be determined by the long-term structural changes he initiates, and his most important legacy battle is just beginning as Congress tackles the holy grail of modern liberalism, a universal health-care system.
Later in the piece, Klein touches on a key issue at the heart of the health-care debate: who should decide whether you can get a particular form of medical treatment?
The President recently told a remarkable story about his grandmother. In the last months of her life ? she was dying of cancer ? she broke her hip and received a hip replacement from Medicare. “I don’t know how much that hip replacement cost,” Obama told the New York Times, and he questioned whether giving people “a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill is a sustainable model.” This is the most sensitive health-care issue imaginable. But the question of whether the government can decide which health-care treatments are appropriate is central to whether an affordable universal system can be devised.
If it unnerves you that a government bureaucrat could soon decide whether your life is worth the cost of a particular medical treatment, you might be interested in the alternative ideas described by people like Sally Pipes.
