America flirts with self-destruction (Martin Wolf, Financial Times)

[swag]

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/bca4c114-29d8-11e3-bbb8-00144feab7de.html?utm_content=buffera9a9a&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer&siteedition=intl#axzz2gYpINpM8


Is the US a functioning democracy? This week legislators decided to shut down a swath of the federal government rather than allow an enacted health law go into operation at the agreed moment. They may go further; if they do not vote to raise the so-called “debt ceiling”, they risk triggering default on US government debt – a fate far worse than the shutdown or fiscal sequestration. If the opposition is prepared to inflict such damage on their own country, the restraint that makes democracy work has gone. Why has this happened? What might be the result? What should the president do?

The first question is the most perplexing. The Republicans are doing all of this in order to impede a modest improvement in the worst healthcare system of any high-income country. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (known as “Obamacare”) is modelled on one introduced in 2006 in Massachusetts by then governor Mitt Romney. Its apparently criminal aims are to cover 32m uninsured people and ensure coverage of those with pre-existing conditions. True, the programme is complex. But it builds on a defective system. That most working people get insurance through their employers is an obstacle to labour market flexibility since it complicates decisions about leaving a job, particularly for people with chronic medical conditions. It is a form of serfdom.

Compare the US health system to those of the other large high-income countries. The US spends 18 per cent of its gross domestic product on health against 12 per cent in the next highest spender, France. The US public sector spends a higher share of GDP than those of Italy, the UK, Japan and Canada, though many people are left uncovered. US spending per head is almost 100 per cent more than in Canada and 150 per cent more than in the UK. What does the US get in return? Life expectancy at birth is the lowest of these countries, while infant mortality is the highest. Potential years of life lost by people under the age of 70 are also far higher. For males this must be partly due to violent deaths. But it is also true for women. (See charts.)

The idea that one should close the government – or risk a default – to stop universal insurance, which other high-income countries take for granted, seems mad. Maybe this shows how much some Republicans loath Barack Obama. Half of the legislators who called on John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, to defund the health law come from the old south. Its dislike of the federal government may be part of the explanation. Republicans might fear not that the programme will fail, but that it will work, cementing the credibility of government.

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[MBS]

1. excellent article

concluding paragraph (excerpted below) is also good:

So what should the administration do? In a democracy, people overturn laws by winning elections,
not by threatening the closure of government or even an outright default. It is impossible to run the
government of a serious country under blackmail threats of this kind. Every time the
administration gives in, it stores up more difficulty for itself. It has to stop doing so . . .
Playing chicken with credibly reckless people is always scary. But the administration cannot give
in. I remain, like Winston Churchill, optimistic: the US will do the right thing in the end, though
not before first exhausting all the alternatives.