NY Times columnist on Republican alternative to Obamacare

It's Ross Douthat of course, the only Times columnist besides Kristoff worth reading.

I am in general agreement with his points.

Given the unsustainability of our existing commitments, the central role that spiraling costs play in making insurance inaccessible, and the difficulties inherent in trying to make Washington responsible for insuring every inhabitant of what will be a nation of 400 million people by century’s end, a reform that expanded insurance substantially but not completely in the short term while putting the health care system as a whole on a sounder footing in the long run (as Bush’s 2007 proposal might have done) could be preferable, on moral as well as practical grounds, to a reform that achieves universality in the near term but ultimately brings everybody on board a sinking ship.

And Douthat makes this point as he ends his column -

If the Republicans win the White House and the Senate and then somehow manage to repeal Obamacare without putting any significant reforms in its place, it will represent not only policy malpractice, but a moral scandal as well.