Obamacare to Tiny Tim’s Rescue

tiny-tim

Paul Krugman made clever use of Dickens’ Christmas Carol in a column last week.  The New York Times columnist and Nobel prize winning economist addresses opponents of the health care bills that have emerged out of the House and Senate, arguing that progressives should be pleased, despite the bills’ limitations.  Arguing that politics is the art of the possible, Krugman asks us to imagine Tiny Tim in 2009 America and then again in 2012 America, when the health care bill (assuming that it passes) would be due to go into effect. 

Tim, of course, has a preexisting condition, and since the bad Scrooge is not the kind of employer who pays benefits, the 2009 Cratchits are out of luck.  With the new plan, however, Bob Cratchit can find an insurance company that must accept him.  Scrooge’s wages are terribly low, but the government will provide Bob a subsidy and direct him to an exchange to help him find a plan.

Krugman also talks about the “Bah, humbug” opponents of the bill, the deficit hawks who claim (incorrectly, he says) that it adds to the deficit.  Then he steps away from Dickens and addresses the “killbillers,” those on the left who would prefer no bill at all to the bills coming out of Congress. You can read Krugman’s column here. 

I appreciated Krugman’s use of Dickens so much that I decided to push it further.  It’s remarkable how helpful the story is.  For instance, progressives might make their case by imagining Scrooge entering the insurance business.  Think of hearing an ad assuring you that “you’re in good hands with Ebeneezer Scrooge” or that, “like a good neighbor, Ebeneezer Scrooge is there.” 

In the killbillers’ view, it’s a problem, given the lack of a government option, that Bob must go to Scrooge Insurance or another of the private insurance companies.  Instead of relying on private charity or running better “public workhouses,” the government will now start paying Scrooge to provide care. That will just end up lining his pockets even more.

Then again, bills’ supporters might counter that the government will now have its eyes on Scrooge. Tight regulations will make sure that he competes fairly with other insurance companies and that he doesn’t make excessive profits.  Furthermore, he won’t be able to reject the Bob Cratchits of the world when they come to him applying for insurance. 

And Scrooge will stand to benefit as well.  He won’t have to spend so much of his overhead finding out about Tiny Tim so that he can reject the Cratchit application.

Supporters might also ask us to imagine Marley & Scrooge as a small business.  The bills, they might argue, will enable Scrooge will be able afford to pay Bob’s health insurance, they might argue.   What if Scrooge, after his miraculous change of heart, had discovered that he couldn’t pay for Bob’s medical insurance after all.  Buying a Christmas goose is one thing.  Paying for health care premiums that are rising 30% a year is something else.  In fact, perhaps even the good Scrooge would have to think about dropping Bob to under 30 hours a week.  Christmas Eve then wouldn’t be the only time that Bob got off.

With the new healthcare (I imagine the bills’ supporters saying), now Scrooge can go to a controlled exchange and even get some subsidy help if he needs it.  He can afford to do the right thing and therefore can feel good about himself.  Meanwhile, because premiums are lower, he could afford to raise Bob’s take home pay.  Bob in turn could afford more logs for his fire, more food for his table, new clothes for Tim.  His spending would pump up the local economy. 

To be sure (left wing skeptics might fire back), the home pay will go up only if Scrooge chooses not to keep the extra savings for himself.  There’s little hope from the old Scrooge that this would happen, and maybe there’s even some question about the extent of the new Scrooge’s benevolent paternalism.  Bob may need to think about unionizing.  But that’s the subject for another post.

Some of the bitter battles over health care depend on Americans’ different views of Scrooge.  The killbillers have a point when they say that Scrooges providing insurance is like foxes running the hen house.  When Edwin Meese, Ronald Reagan’s attorney general, came to the defense of Scrooge in the 1980’s and openly argued that greed is good, he revealed the agenda of an administration that presided over an ever-widening income disparity in this country between rich and poor.

[Here’s the Ed Meese quote, by the way.  Delivered to the National Press Club on December 15, 1983: “Ebenezer Scrooge suffered from bad press in his time. If you really look at the facts, he didn’t exploit Bob Cratchit.” Explains Meese, “Bob Cratchit was paid 10 shillings a week, which was a very good wage at the time… Bob, in fact, had good cause to be happy with his situation. His wife didn’t have to work…He was able to afford the traditional Christmas dinner of roast goose and plum pudding…So let’s be fair to Scrooge. He had his faults, but he wasn’t unfair to anyone.”]

Then again, to think that Scrooge as all bad is as simplistic as seeing him as all good.  Leftist critics sometimes don’t acknowledge Scrooge’s “enlightened self interest” or, for that matter, the way that employers (not all, certainly, but many) feel responsibility for their Bob Cratchits.

I haven’t begun to do justice to all the ways the story lends itself to the issues.  I hope you will jump in with some of your own applications.   My own views, as you probably can tell, line up with Krugman’s (and Obama’s). But putting that aside, I love the way that a well-known story can become a referent point for a national debate.  They make possible the rich conversations that, as E. D. Hirsch argues in Cultural Literacy, are essential to keep societies operating.

One last note.  This has been a weird Christmas in that we have had a bitterly divided Senate remaining in session right up to Christmas Eve.  I know that some people felt like they got a Christmas goose on December 24 and some a lump of coal when the Senate passed the bill. We normally like to see Christmas separated out from politics so that we can step back and reconnect with our higher selves.  This Christmas, many are finding it hard to step back.

But Dickens knew that it was hard.  Think of his story as a challenge.  Can you say, “God bless us everyone,” with “us” including Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, Joe Liebermann, Ben Nelson, Lindsay Graham, Russ Feingold, and the rest of the Senate?  By calling down blessings upon them, I don’t mean agreeing with them.  We couldn’t agree with them all even if we wanted to.  But if we enter into Tiny Tim’s spirit of generosity, we create a space that allows others to step into their bigness.  They may or may not take that opportunity.  But if we define ourselves by our anger, we guarantee that they will remain small and we become small ourselves.

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