Here is a very interesting article from the New York Times about states jumping into the breach and devising various ways to help seniors manage the rising cost of prescription drugs.
On the one hand this is a rather inspiring story of states devising pragmatic solutions to a pressing social problem. And there’s even a nice ‘laboratories of democracy’ angle to it — with different states using different devices and strategems to approach the problem.
But in the final analysis this is a story of failure, not success. For any number of reasons the provision of health care for seniors is inherently a matter for the federal government, not the state governments. The states are only getting into the act because Congress has failed to act.
Americans are fundamentally Americans, not Texans or Californians or New Yorkers. And as Crolian Progressives argued at the beginning of the last century there are certain problems that can’t be solved by the states, or private enterprise, or voluntary associations, but only by concerted national action.
Health care for seniors is indubitably one of those cases.
Now as long as we’re talking about national purpose and national action, I’m curious where those National Greatness Conservatives (who’ve got a touch of a Crolian streak in them) come down on this question. For a nation to be great, mustn’t it be great as a nation?
