How much is too much?
Megan McArdle spars with Ezra Klein over the politics of how Democrats price their health care proposal:
But it seems to me quite obvious how the number got picked and why it became a hard limit: it would be very difficult to sell a bill that’s any bigger. A health care bill much bigger could be plausibly rounded up to a trillion dollars by the opposition, and though the American public is still somewhat blinded by sticker shock from the last eight years of deficits, $1 trillion still sounds like a lot of money. It also sounds like the highly unpopular bailouts.
Maybe Democrats could have passed a bill that cost $1.1 trillion, or more–cobbling together coalitions by spending freely on goodies is a time honored tradition. The problem is, the Democrats already spent a trillion dollars on goodies.
There’s no denying that the politics are important, but, placing those dastardly practices aside for a moment, how much is too much? The difference between $900 billion and $1.1 trillion is a lot. But will it make a difference in our annual deficit and $12 trillion dollar national debt? Maybe not. $200 billion could do a lot of good, but is money saved in health care sure to be spent elsewhere? Again, hard to say.
There is a normative case to be made for controlling deficits. The problem is that political haggling about spending limits rarely reflects well thought out normative reasoning. If the Democratic proposal is the right thing to do, price tags only matter in two ways: either practically, because the money is available or it’s not, or morally because of an opportunity cost.
Sadly, neither is present in the current debate.
-Sam
Related posts:
- Who should we bail out next?
- Personal responsibility and the nanny state
- Do the right thing
- Singer on health care rationing
- Healthcare is nice, but (morally) expensive
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