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The problem of course as we now have witnessed through two US administrations, and numerous foreign ones, is how does a government start to explain the phenomenon, peak oil, and more importantly the extreme sacrifices required to mitigate its occurrence to its citizens. Suppose the President gave a prime-time speech describing the evidence for the proximity of peak oil and laying out proposals to the Congress as to what needs to be done. It does not take a rocket scientist to deduce that there would be a huge political flare-up and likely a collapse of the equity markets. The President's political opposition, which has yet to figure out just why polar ice caps are melting, would go completely berserk at the hint of restrictions either through taxes or other means on energy consumption.

What will happen in several years' time? Will politicians look back on 2009 as the year they should've seen peak oil coming? This Falls Church News-Press article addresses the dilemma faced by revealing the oncoming crisis now, made more acute by the fact that we're in the midst of a great recession. Arguably though the crash to come will be even greater if we don't start to face reality now.

What about the proposed cost savings? They, too, are questionable. Most of them consist of reductions in Medicare outlays, which, according to this C.B.O. analysis, would save four hundred and twenty-six billion dollars between 2010 and 2019 compared with current plans. Look a bit more closely, and you find that more than half of the Medicare savings (two hundred and twenty-nine billion dollars) come from cutting payments to providers of services under the regular program; most of the rest (a hundred and seventy billion dollars) come from changing the way payments are set in the Medicare Advantage program. Does anybody really believe that these savings will materialize? For decades now, Congress has been promising to reduce the growth of Medicare outlays, and yet every year they continue to go up. The reasons are straightforward: the population is aging; seniors are politically active; and health-care treatments, particularly for the aging, continue to evolve in complex and costly ways.

To be fair, contained in its reform plan, the White House does have a proposal to address these issues: the establishment of an Independent Medicare Advisory Council (IMAC), which would provide Congress each year with cost-saving recommendations. “By removing some of the political pressure around such reforms,” Romer said in the same speech, “the IMAC would make it easier for improvements to be made year after year.” This statement can only be described as wishful thinking. I hope it will be proved right, but Washington is replete with now-defunct independent bodies and commissions that toiled dutifully, did good work, and made little difference.

So what does it all add up to? The U.S. government is making a costly and open-ended commitment to help provide health coverage for the vast majority of its citizens. I support this commitment, and I think the federal government’s spending priorities should be altered to make it happen. But let’s not pretend that it isn’t a big deal, or that it will be self-financing, or that it will work out exactly as planned. It won’t.

Many Democratic insiders know all this, or most of it. What is really unfolding, I suspect, is the scenario that many conservatives feared. The Obama Administration, like the Bush Administration before it (and many other Administrations before that) is creating a new entitlement program, which, once established, will be virtually impossible to rescind. At some point in the future, the fiscal consequences of the reform will have to be dealt with in a more meaningful way, but by then the principle of (near) universal coverage will be well established. Even a twenty-first-century Ronald Reagan will have great difficult overturning it.

That takes me back to where I began. Both in terms of the political calculus of the Democratic Party, and in terms of making the United States a more equitable society, expanding health-care coverage now and worrying later about its long-term consequences is an eminently defensible strategy. Putting on my amateur historian’s cap, I might even claim that some subterfuge is historically necessary to get great reforms enacted. But as an economics reporter and commentator, I feel obliged to put on my green eyeshade and count the dollars.

Now this I can really appreciate. Cassidy wants the Obama healthcare reform (or transformation to be more accurate) but at least acknowledges that the "deficit neutral" claim is either dishonest, or at least, self-delusional. He makes a strong argument that America is morally obligated to insure all its citizens, and condemns our lack of fiscal prioritization (a view I share to some extent). In a perfect world, Cassidy and Krugman would debate Prager and Krouthammer on the Senate floor before the vote was allowed.

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bou*****さん
東京金融取引所？
たしかぁ〜・・・
最近まで、ここを仕切ってたのって・・・・

chi*****さん
＞bou*****さん
そうです、「天下り」じゃない天下りの方です。
「天下り禁止」の民主党政権による斎藤次郎新郵政社長の経歴

1993年 大蔵事務次官

1994年 細川内閣時に小沢一郎と国民福祉税（消費税7%）を構想

1995年 大蔵省退任

1995年 旧大蔵省 財政金融研究所 顧問（天下り）

1995年 社団法人研究情報基金（旧大蔵省外郭団体）理事長（渡り）

1995年 財団法人国際金融情報センター（旧大蔵省外郭団体）顧問（渡り）

2000年 東京金融先物取引所（金融庁監督下）理事長（渡り）

2004年 東京金融先物取引所株式会社化に伴い社長（渡り継続）

2009年 民主党の政策により日本郵政社長（天下り）

金融取を集団提訴へ＝FX・南ア通貨急落で－損失の個人投資家ら（時事通信） - Yahoo!ニュース

めもっとこ

abuf:

teikyo:

http://f.hatena.ne.jp/contractio/20091120004130