Megan McArdle, business and economics editor for The Atlantic Monthly, says the Obama administration is suffering not so much from tactical errors - like bending over backwards to do the opposite of whatever Clinton did -- but because of their bungling of the stimulus bill last winter.
"They thought somehow if they passed one big problem it would give them the political capital to pass more big programs," McArdle says. In fact, they had one shot to spend a lot of money and they spent it on whatever we got in the stimulus package. That's part of the problem."
The other part of the problem, at least from McArdle's point of view, is that major overhaul of the health-care system isn't necessary.
"I'm a big fan of not doing anything if you can't think of anything good to do," she says. "That's not very popular with the government, obviously. "
McArdle's view is that the number of "chronically uninsured" people who actually need access to health care is much smaller than the 40 to 50 million figure often cited by reform proponents, a figure she claims includes illegal immigrants, people eligible for Medicare and young/healthy Americans betting they don't need the health-care system. (McArdle cites data on the long-term uninsured from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and and Aug. 2008 report by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.)
The "pretty small" number of uninsured Americans who really need help could be covered by a "minor expansion" of Medicaid or other government program, McArdle says. "You could do a fairly small intervention that would not cost that much [but] that's not politically what Democrats are looking for."
Editor's note: Stay tuned for part two of our interview where McArdle handicaps the likely path of health-care reform from here.
