Where's the Republican Bipartisan Alternative?

The No. 3 Republican in the Senate, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who attended one session with the president, recalled that in the 1960s, when he was a Congressional aide, Democrats and Republicans worked together on civil rights. He said he saw no possibility of a bipartisan health bill.

“White House officials don’t want one or don’t know how to do one,” Mr. Alexander said.

Ignoring that bipartisanship on civil rights arose from party structures that no longer exist today due to the increasing ideological alignment of the parties (there are no more moderate/liberal Republicans, and many fewer conservative Southern Democrats), Alexander does raise an interesting point. Not that the White House doesn't want a bipartisan bill -- they certainly want one and have gone to great lengths to get one. It's the idea that no one knows how to do bipartisanship any more -- because, I'd postulate, of this same ideological alignment of the parties.

I raise the question because the Republicans have finally released their alternative health-care bill, and it is a doozy that essentially does ... nothing. It doesn't even deal with the problem of "pre-existing conditions," which numerous Republicans believe is a necessary reform. Nor would it expand health insurance coverage to people who don't have it. It will, in fact, make existing insurance coverage worth by gutting regulation.

But aside from not doing much, this Republican bill isn't even remotely bipartisan. They don't even bother to include any Democratic ideas about health-care reform. Say what you will about the Democrats' process, they certainly included Republican ideas in a symbolic way, particularly on malpractice tort reform, and I would argue that they included conservative ideas because their plan is a compromise between the kind of government involvement favored by the left (single-payer as a prime example) and the private model preferred on the right.

It's plainly true, of course, that this bill -- which probably wouldn't even gain much support in the Republican caucus -- is another obstruction tactic from the congressional opposition, who have waited through some eight months of wide-ranging policy discussion to offer their alternative. However, I want to know why reporters who dwell on the Democrats' lack of success in courting Republicans aren't asking those same questions of the GOP. I'd postulate that bipartisanship is dead on a lot of big issues because of the ideological alignment discussed above, but if the MSM is going to make it their primary measure of legislative quality, they should at least hold Republicans to the same standards. Ultimately, though, the biggest problem isn't that Republicans don't know how to do bipartisan health-care reform, either. It's that they just don't want to do health-care reform.

-- Tim Fernholz