A Sound Approach to Healthcare Reform

Ross Douthat, a New York Times editorialist from the right of center perspective, has a good column up on healthcare. Here's some of it:

"But any lawmakers voting “yes” should have no illusions about what they’re voting for. This version of reform probably won’t make health care more affordable for most Americans, or place the system on firmer footing for the long run. Despite all the talk about a once-in-a-generation opportunity, our political class will have barely finished congratulating itself before rising costs will force everyone back to the negotiating table to consider more radical approaches."

The gist of the piece is a compromise on healthcare, one in which the Feds ultimately act as the guarantor of catastrophic healthcare for all Americans (universal catastrophic coverage) while turning to Republican/Conservative/market based reforms to deal with the costs of everything short of catastrophe. Another key graph:

"Such a system would provide universal catastrophic health insurance, in other words, while creating a free market for non-catastrophic care. In the process, it would marry a central conservative insight — that we’ll never control spending so long as Americans are insulated from the true price of their medical care — to the admirable liberal premise that nobody should go bankrupt paying for life-saving treatment."

I'd like to see this general approach mapped out. I think it has merit.

UPDATE: Here's a tweak on Douthat's approach from the Weekly Standard Blog.