I Participate in the Political System

South Baltimore's congressman, Johns Sarbanes, held a town hall-style meeting at the Ella Bailey Recreational Center (attached to Johnson Elementary School). Since this is literally across the street from my house, I couldn't help but to go. I'll bet you'll be shocked to learn that my roommate and I represented 50% of the people between the ages of 14 and 30. There was a very strong contingent under 15 as the event was co-hosted by the South Baltimore Youth Council, which is apparently a civic organization for kids in South Baltimore. Seems like a really cool idea, it was definitely a lot different than the sort of "get kids involved in politics" organizations you see in the suburbs. For starters, it didn't seem to be entirely run by overachieving parents.

Congressman John Sarbanes speaking at the Ella Bailey
Recreation Center in South Baltimore.

Overall, I'd say it was a pretty good event to attend. Congressman Sarbanes did a pretty good job of explaining that he was helping to advance the general Democratic platform, but that it's a slow process. He did say that he expects things to improve after the 2008 election. Overall, the main impression I got was that it's pretty hard to be a freshman congressman. In the grand scheme of things in Washington, you have almost no say in anything. At the same time, you have to explain to constituents why you aren't impeaching the administration, lowering gas prices, or helping to keep crazy men from trying to kill them. (The woman in that article showed up to ask for help to somehow get the man committed to a more secure facility. The Congressman and his staff seemed pretty concerned about that one - hopefully they're able to help the poor woman).

Wow, here's a good note, apparently they apprehended the man in question this afternoon just before the town hall meeting.

Did John Sarbanes say anything of note? He did say that while he has not signed on to Representative John Conyers's health-care reform legislation, he believes that we need universal health-care. He supports a single-payer system as the eventual end state of the reform, but he's not sure that it's a political possibility right now. His justification is that a single-payer system will remove a lot of the bureaucratic costs involved with private insurance. I can't say as I know a whole lot about how the private health insurance system operates, but I do know that I generally am not required to take a lot of action with my insurance plan. It's pretty clear what I need to do and they offer a pretty great level of service. Also, because of the choices available to me, I am able to pick a plan with a generally low level of coverage (but some coverage for catastrophic events) and pay less for insurance.

My fear with a single-payer system is that it will become a new form of wealth redistribution - the government will require healthy people to subsidize the medical care for those with chronic illnesses. Many expensive chronic illnesses are not randomly distributed, they are influenced by individual life choices. To some extent, lower health care costs are one of the benefits that one should expect to receive from exercise. This is not, however, the make or break issue for me. All insurance pools risk and has this net effect to some extent. However, with a government-run system there will be tremendous moral hazard for politicians to rig the premiums and coverage to win votes. Basically, it's very easy to imagine a system that is obligated by law to pay out far more in benefits that it receives in premiums. The system could do this because it will be backed by the federal government, it will just result in further deficit spending, which it not something that our country needs.

(Yikes! Check out all the extra taxes Conyers is proposing to fund his health care program. You need that tax revenue plus $387 billion in savings from switching from private to public insurance. Let's spell out what has to happen, you need the federal government to create a bureaucracy to provide health care not just to those privately insured, but to the uninsured as well, AND do it for $387 billion less than it costs to run the current private insurance system. Oh, and you're going to build the system, launch the system, and achieve these savings by 2010. Does that seem even remotely plausible?)

Perhaps I could support a single-payer system if it was given independent, apolitical oversight. The mission of the system would have to be to attempt to equalize the value returned to each citizen as it compares to their burden of paying into the system. I certainly don't want people not getting health care, I just don't want give short-sighted political leaders to have yet another weapon in their battle against good fiscal policy.

Anyway, back to the town hall meeting. Representative Sarbanes seemed to do a pretty good job at answering everyone's questions. Nothing that he said set off any alarm bells of terrible fiscal policy or populist economic ideas (although he did talk about "profiteering" at oil companies and saying that "supply and demand don't explain all of the price [of gas]"). In general, he did a good job of supporting the children present and seems to genuinely care about his constituents and want to help. If nothing else, I never got the feeling that he didn't want to be there, it seemed like his heart is in the right place even if I have my reservations about how he'll vote on business regulation, health care, and other economic issues.

Congressman John Sarbanes with the South Baltimore
Youth Council.