Today in The Wall St. Journal the Real Time Economics section is focused on two letters recently released by groups of economists, respectively. Each group is large in number, each contains ivy league professors, each makes logical arguments. Simply put, these are really smart people making really smart points.
Unfortunately for the common folk trying to get their bearings, they are also making conflicting points. Even more unfortunately, their conflict is over health care reform and the legislation currently making its way through Congress. This conflict of ideas, however, nicely highlights one of the major problems with the health care reform debate. This is namely that each respective side, completely devoid of more emotional arguments, can make a strong, intelligible and well-reasoned case for either pushing a bill through at all costs on the one hand or scrapping the process entirely on the other.
This ability to make logical arguments is counterintuitively, however, part of what has made the health care debate so difficult. Assuming politicians read the original bills, a bit of a leap of faith, it is hard to see how they have kept up with each individual amendment and tweak in each house of Congress. Therefore, many of their arguments are idealogical and based on party lines rather than on the merits, but are nonetheless at least marginally supported by a well-reasoned analysis. So all that is left for Americans in a sea of competing yet compelling claims is partisan bickering, shouting, accusations and name calling; in a word, hysterics. Most unfortunately, these hysterics have spilled over into the cable news realm as well, making the 'nightly news' more grating than informative.
However, this is more the fault of the leadership of both parties than of Americans. In the opinion of many, neither side has made a strong enough case to be entirely defensible. And both sides, politically and idealogically, have dug in to some extent in an attempt to make the bill as easy to swallow as possible back home. However, little of this back and forth is actually based on the merits. Therefore, all that is left for politicians and citizens alike is arguing, petty in nature maybe, but with one of the most critical debates of the next few decades as the backdrop. And if politicians involved in the process and some of the smartest people in the country can't agree (not that I am necessarily saying these groups are mutually exclusive of course) what is the average American supposed to do?
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