Bend It Like Obama?

As I write, the Senate Finance Committee has yet to release its version of healthcare reform legislation, and Harry Reid has announced that the Senate won't vote on any healthcare bill until after the August recess. This is worrisome. The future of progressive politics and the nature of the American social contract, not to mention the lives and health of millions of our fellow citizens, are up for grabs.

Strangely, though, you wouldn't really know it from listening to the pronouncements emanating from the White House. Instead, they're focused with laserlike precision on "bending the curve." Testifying before Congress in June, Council of Economic Advisors chair Christina Romer said she wants "to focus on slowing the growth rate of costs...the so-called curve-bending that can last for decades." Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag emphasized in a recent interview that "the legislation that emerges from this process has to contain key provisions that will bend the curve over the long term." And even before he took office, President Obama said that "the key is going to be medium-term and long-term, how do we bend the curve so that we start getting these deficits down to a manageable level?"

In this case the "curve" is the projected increase of healthcare expenses over the next several decades. Healthcare currently accounts for 17 percent of GDP (more than in any other industrialized nation), and its share is growing. This predicted inflation in healthcare costs will drive up the cost of Medicare and Medicaid, which if allowed to grow at the current rate will eventually bankrupt the government. Therefore, reforming healthcare is crucial to keeping America solvent. This is true and right and compelling enough, so far as it goes.

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