Tony Snow on Healthcare
An excellent piece today on Slate by Daniel Gross noted that Tony Snow, the outgoing White House Press Secretary, does not have any money in his 401(k). The only pension he’ll be receiving is from a journalists’ union. The article also reports his gratitude for the excellent medical treatment he’s received for his cancer. “I've been lucky I work at the White House,” he says (meaning for the benefits). How would he fare, asks Gross, under a market-driven plan that treats patients as consumers? I suppose it would be, as Mayor Giuliani contends, "un-American" to suggest that we give everyone the same insurance as the White House (i.e., you and I taxpayers) gives federal employees. The Onion hit a similar theme when it announced, “Cheney Dropped by White House HMO.” It’s a sad day when a Press Secretary making $168,000 (three times the median) a year feels like money is tight yet advocates policy solutions that would make the very things he struggles with---healthcare and retirement---worse for others. If Tony Snow hasn’t saved for retirement, how effective will a system constructed entirely of IRAs be? Perhaps more than Iraq, this presidency nose-dived when the President, as he promised he would, pushed aggressively (and mendaciously) to privatize Social Security. Americans, it turned out, really like social welfare. How about remembering this when we talk about healthcare?
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