David Brooks = Captain Obvious

Brian recommended this David Brooks column on health care costs as something I needed to read.

I don't dislike Brooks by any means, but I was going to write a response where I noted that many of the texts he recommended featured interesting analysis and worthwhile suggestions, but also pointed out that it stated a lot of incredibly obvious things.

Rather than do that, however, I'll just link to James Surowiecki and Matt Yglesias ...

But if you want to find villains in our failure to focus on controlling long-term costs, Obama is the last person you should point your finger at. The administration has done more than anyone else to focus attention on this issue. Second come moderate Democrats in congress who’ve also emphasized this. Third come congressional liberals, who don’t seem that interested in the subject but also seem perfectly willing to embrace it as a goal of reform as long as reform succeeds in expanding access. Then you’ve got the congressional Republicans who’ve given no sign of interests in bargaining in good faith. And then you’ve got the right-wing demagogues who now have every politicians in American convinced that any move toward cost control will get you denounced as eager to euthenize grandma. Insofar as respectable conservative like Brooks would like to see health care spending brought under control at some point, their failure to confront these voices is going to make that impossible.

UPDATE: Ezra Klein has thoughts as well ...

But Brooks's explanation of why health-care reform differs from this technocratic ideal is misleading to his reader. He argues that the health-care reform proposals on the table are insufficiently ambitious because of some intellectual oversight on the part of the White House. If only they read more white papers! That's simply not true: This particular White House contains more expertise on the economics of health care than any in memory. What they don't possess is the capacity to change the incentives of Congress.