Big Plans and Less Compromise Are the Way to Reform

The NYT has an OP-ed piece today written by Paul Krugman in which he makes a compelling case that compromise is going to kill the efforts President Obama is making towards reforming the health care system.  Citing the compromises made in the stimulus plan he suggests that the same will happen with health care.  Too many compromises that gain little or no Republican support and hurt the reforms to the point that they are not functional.

In this excerpt, the author makes his central arguement:

"The point is that if you’re making big policy changes, the final form of the policy has to be good enough to do the job. You might think that half a loaf is always better than none — but it isn’t if the failure of half-measures ends up discrediting your whole policy approach." (More)

He has some advice for the Obama administration that I think may progressives have been making:

"So Mr. Obama and Democrats in Congress have to hang tough — no more gratuitous giveaways in the attempt to sound reasonable. And reform advocates have to keep up the pressure to stay on track. Yes, the perfect is the enemy of the good; but so is the not-good-enough-to-work. Health reform has to be done right." (More)