Regular readers should understand by now that 2k has less to do with politics than with the church and her ministry. On that anti-2kers and 2kers agree. But sometimes 2k does arise even among those who are engaged in the business of doing or theorizing about politics. On the political front, then, 2kers may be intrigued to know about a couple of recent items.
The first is the candidacy of Ben Sasse for the Republican Senate nomination in Nebraska. Those familiar with Ben from his associations with Modern Reformation may know of his Lutheran-turned-Reformed ecclesiastical background and I can personally vouch for his 2k outlook. Ben served in HHS for the George W. Bush administration and has spent a lot of time recently thinking about health care in the United States. Slate recently interviewed Sasse about the subject (and others). Surprise, no Lordship of Christ or Satanhood of Democrats came up in his answers:
Well, let’s go back. In Medicaid, there’s no demonstrable evidence right now that people with Medicaid have better health outcomes than people who have no insurance. So, just saying, “I empathize and I feel your pain and I want to therefore make the government solve all these problems,” we don’t have evidence that that actually works. So if you want to actually help people, what we need to do is create a society that has a lot more people who are healthfully and steadily and stability in a middle class and believe that there is a growth economy, and that there’s opportunities for their kids and grandkids that are as great as what our grandparents knew, when we felt like America was still on the upswing. America should still be on the upswing, but our optimism should be about the American people, and about the ability of communities and neighborhoods and schools and small businesses to solve these problems. Big government programs haven’t demonstrated that they actually ameliorate these problems that you’re talking about. I mean to you, point about Oregon or West Virginia, more Medicaid signups, you can put more names and more numbers on government programs, but it isn’t clear that that actually benefits them, so I think we need to go back to the drawing board.
I think most Americans believe in a basic social safety net. But if there are 3–5 million hard-to-insure people right now, why are we disrupting the 165 million persons in an employer-sponsored insurance market? As of now we don’t know how many enrollees there are in these programs, but we know that millions of people have been kicked off their plans already because of Obamacare. The president said if you want to keep your plan you can keep it. We know that’s not true and right now we don’t even know that the benefits, in scare quotes, of the new exchange programs are even going to add up to the amount of people that lost their individual market insurance in New Jersey and Florida and Nebraska. So I think that this is hugely disruptive, and trying to solve a problem it’s creating unintended consequences that are creating more problems than its even solving. And it’s at a price tag we can’t afford. There are better solutions.
The other item of note is the new book by Jeff Taylor, who teaches political science at the very Kuyperian Dort College. Here is an excerpt from a review of Politics on a Human Scale: The American Tradition of Decentralism:
Jeff Taylor, the chair of a political science department at a private college in northern Iowa, successfully shifts the focus on federalism from its institutional moorings to the way it was scuttled in the Twentieth Century by party politics gone astray. In this respect, the book is unique. What one learns by thinking about decentralization through the lens of political party evolution is that the rush for electoral advantage in building national coalitions came at the cost of sacrificing a good deal of liberty and sanity. Most critically, the hunger for power and national scale led to a forfeiture of politics on a human scale: the politics of decentralism.
Nowadays, we have 315 million Americans spread across 3.8 million square miles of American territory. Oddly, the higher the population and wider the range of policy preferences, the more intense the push becomes to settle on one brand of economic justice, one approach to health care, one ideological conception of best practices, and one oversized approach to national defense. Lost in this cacophony for centralization are the sober voices who remind that symbolic diversity in the face of considerable constraints upon community autonomy is a hollow pursuit.
If Jeff Taylor’s book was merely a retelling of the benefits of federalism, it would have less value. Political scientists like Thomas R. Dye have already made the case that federalism—rooted in multiple, independent governments with considerable responsibility for the welfare of people within their jurisdictions—protects important political values such as individual liberty, pluralism, party competition, political participation, and the management of conflict (American Federalism: Competition Among Governments, 1990, 175). While Taylor’s book addresses these considerations, it is much more focused on the idea that decentralization helps nourish attitudes, understandings and relationships that are central to real human flourishing.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not claiming that Taylor is 2k. But a word search at Amazon of the book indicates that the words “kingdom” and “Lordship” are absent, which is an indication — in addition to Taylor’s own blogging at Front Porch Republic — that despite his Kuyperian surroundings, he is not running his studies through a neo-Calvinist grid.
Old Life 
Does 2k have anything to say about speaking truthfully?
http://kff.org/medicaid/issue-brief/what-is-medicaids-impact-on-access-to-care-health-outcomes-and-quality-of-care-setting-the-record-straight-on-the-evidence/
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Has Ben Sasse studied the implications of any other federal led health care systems in the western world? Here in Britain the National Health Service which commenced in 1948 has grown to be a monolithic and largely untouchable institution. Care can be good or lousy, and it’s demands are limitless despite the widely recognised inefficiencies of NHS management and service.
For a nation founded upon State rights and liberty balanced with federal governance the USA seems in so many ways tilting massively towards a social democratic outlook and this is typified in Obamacare. Like the legislation put in place by the UK’s Tony Blair and his Fabian ideologues which they knew would be nigh on impossible to repeal, Americans will likewise find all the health care reforms they allowed will be with them for good. I sincerely hope Ben’s clear understanding of the health issues and role of government will be recognised and that he makes a solid contribution to this critical issue for the USA.
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Secession is another way to go, besides federalism.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/breaking-up/
My soundbites leave out Jesus Christ and “common grace” and “natural law”…..
The state is not your brother’s keeper. Give your own money.
Love your enemy, who is not necessarily your brother.
Force liberty on all socialists.
Eliminate a socialized military. It encourages wars on credit.
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John, the study that Sasse apparently relied on was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. That the Kaiser Foundation has other studies does not mean Sasse has a truth problem. In fact the issue is a matter of current controversy in the health care community as a whole since it is incredibly difficult to do an apples to apples comparison. The NEJM article was noteworthy because some unique circumstances in Oregon provided an opportunity to really do a comparison where the presence or absence of Medicaid coverage was the only variable between the groups studied. As with any such large scale study, I would expect the data to be re-examined, subjected to different means of analysis and otherwise subject to change over time particularly if the study is continued over time. I would note that the NEJM is peer reviewed. I don’t think it is fair to imply that Sasse has spoken untruthfully.
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It strikes me that the popularity of the anti-2k position has more to do with intellectual laziness than anything else. It takes far less effort to castigate one’s opponent as evil than to demonstrate why one’s opponent is wrong, particularly in a manner that is persuasive.
In many instances, the left and center-left is willing to take the time to build a case for what they want. But the right too often is impatient and petulant, electing to cast aspersions rather than pick apart what the left has proposed. And only when the aspersions haven’t succeeded does the right opt for more reasonable arguments. But it is often too late by then.
John’s idiotic comment is a prime example of this. Data regarding the effectiveness of Medicaid is not of the type that lends itself to unambiguous answers. Moreover, there are probably instances where it improves access and other instances where it doesn’t. So, it strikes me as ignorant to call Sasse out as a liar merely because there are other studies whose conclusions are not entirely consistent with the NEJM study upon which Sasse relies. John could have provided an analysis of why the NEJM is wrong, but he’s apparently too dumb and lazy to go to such lengths. No, he just trolls the internet, finds something that disagrees, and calls Sasse a liar. Sadly, this kind lazy overconfidence has become the hallmark of how the anti-2K crowd addresses issues.
It’s not that 2K advocates don’t have respect for Scripture. No, it’s that we also have respect for what God reveals in the world around us, and we’re willing to take the time and effort to analyze it before drawing conclusions. IMO, the anti-2K position has done nothing but recast stupidity and laziness as supposed virtues.
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John H., of course, not. 2k is antinomian. Where have you been?
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McMark, you beat me to it — secession.
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Bobby, but John H. plays right into 2k hands by citing the Kaiser Commission. The brief has nothing to say about the Lordship of Christ or speaking the gospel to power or about the authority of Scripture. It is one perspective in the common realm. And of course, 2k critics never do policy. The exegesis would be too arduous.
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Dan, the article I linked discusses at length the same study by the NEJM you are apparently referring to and demonstrates how popular Conservative representations of its findings are incorrect.
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John, the Kaiser article ASSERTS that the NEJM study has been interpreted incorrectly. That is their right, but their conclusion may or may not be right. I would note that so far I have found no follow up in a peer reviewed journal that has taken issue with or followed up on the NEJM study, though it would not surprise me if more data driven studies came out reaching the same or a different conclusion. This stuff is hard- a family member of mine was until recently on the board of directors of a large regional not for profit hospital chain. He is an engineer by training and a continual frustration the group faced was getting solid outcomes based data that management could make decisions on. There is all kinds of loose talk about, for example, basing Medicare reimbursement on outcomes, but in practice that is an extremely difficult task. Even so, people of good faith are committed to trying to make changes in the system in that direction.
Sasse’s interpretation of the NEJM study neither is or was unreasonable, and it is going way overboard to accuse him of having a problem with the truth based on the opinion of an interested party.
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Even the Oregon study found lower depression, and I don’t believe there’s any debate that Medicaid increases access to care. Are those not benefits?
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There is an untrue statement in Mr. Sasse’s Slate interview with Dave Weigel. At the point where Mr. Weigel asked Mr. Sasse about a person with an annual income of $20,000 who develops a kidney disorder, Mr. Sasse replied that a person making $20k would have Medicaid coverage.
That is 100 percent wrong. In Nebraska, the income ceiling for Medicaid eligibility for a single person is about $350 per month — a very long way from $20k. Other states may be more generous with their Medicaid benefits, but since Mr. Sasse wants to represent Nebraska, he should be aware of reality in Nebraska.
I am not familiar with Medicaid operations in other states, but if you look at Nebraska the majority of Medicaid recipients (in terms of dollars spent) are the elderly in nursing homes, people who were born with extreme disabling conditions who have never been able to work, or people who suffered catastrophic brain injuries or similar medical disasters as adults.
$350 per month is living-in-your-car poor. Nebraska always has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation. You will find very few able-bodied adults in Nebraska receiving any sort of benefit. (It’s my understanding that SCHIP benefits for children are paid for through taxes on tobacco products.)
I don’t know much about Mr. Sasse, so I look forward to learning more about him as the campaign unfolds I do hope he takes the time to mesh his broad, ideological beliefs with with the facts as they exist in Nebraska.
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Sorry for my earlier post being so long. I also wanted to note that if you have a state where the majority of the Medicaid population is elderly, in nursing homes and suffering life-threatening medical conditions, your outcomes are necessarily going to be bad.
Finally, to receive Medicaid benefits one has to first apply for Medicaid. If an adult suffers a catastrophic medical condition from, say, an auto accident, the initial costs are not covered by Medicaid unless that person is already enrolled. I see so many comments from people of the nature “I don’t have insurance but if I get hit by a car, I’ll just go on Medicaid.” It doesn’t work that way.
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Dor(d)t College
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cpas, not more NYC chauvinism!
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These warm weather CPA jobs are tempting me. I’m already dreading winter and it’s July.
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MORE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWeNRz31kic
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Imagine that, Christian bakers may act in their business practices in ways they don’t act at home:
Chilling.
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