Sunday, June 14, 2015

Liberal vs Conservative Approaches

     We have worked with government agencies as both adviser and advocate.  In that work we have notice a distinct difference in how liberals and conservatives approach legislative issues.  What we noticed kind of explains one of the primary difference on how Democrats and Republics want to approach the healthcare laws.
     The approach the Democrats seem to prefer is the "Field of Dreams" - build it and they will come.  They prefer to focus of policy.  They assume the details will take of themselves.  The Republicans on the other hand are "results driven" and detail oriented. They start with the results that they want to achieve and then work backward into broader plans.
     The Affordable Care Act was a huge piece of legislation and virtually impossible validate the end product.  The abysmal role-out should not have been a surprise.  It was made even worse by the fact that so few on the democratic side had little executive experience.  The Republicans harped on the law being so broad that no one knew what was in the law or how it was likely to work.  They wanted to start with much smaller measurable pieces and work backward into a broader scope legislation.
     For sure there were many other self-serving political agendas in the confrontation on this law, but this difference in approach to legislation maybe why liberal and conservative minded people find it so hard to work together.

1 comment:

  1. I disagree. Trickle-down a.k.a. Supply-side a.k.a. Reaganomics a.k.a. voodoo economics, a distinctly Republican idea, was sold to the American public over three decades ago, has been a dismal failure and fits the "Field of Dreams " model to a tee.
    The ACA as passed bears little resemblance to the original health care reform bill passed by the house. As someone who actually read the almost 2000 page original document, I can say this with certainty. The original house bill simply expanded Medicaid by offering coverage to low income working families with pro rated premiums.It also include provisions to create a national medical records database with a uniform data coding and security standards and addressed problems with accessibility to healthcare in rural areas and on Native American reservations.
    By contrast, in 1989 the Heritage foundation, a pro-corporate policy institute, proposed the individual mandate coupled with a voucher system for low income families as a replacement for medicaid and medicare.
    I'm not claiming the Dems are any better. They're not. I suggest a different axis of comparison. The Demcrats want to save the world from the corporationd, while the Republicans want to save the corporations from the world. Neither side particularly gives a crap for their constituents .

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