Mike Lux is wrong; Obama is not a pluralist

September 15, 2:51 PMDes Moines Republican ExaminerCory Cramer

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In a Huffington Post article today, Mike Lux attempted to draw a distinction between technocrats and pluralists in Obama’s administration.

While I’m somewhat impressed that Lux would even take a stab at reading the Federalist Papers, he completely misapplies pluralism when referring to Obama’s health care policy. Lux argues that Obama is a pluralist, in the vein of Alexander Hamilton, because a public option would balance the power of the insurance industry.

The truth is that true pluralism, as described in the Federalist Papers, would require individual states to adopt their own health care reforms. That would create 50 different public choices along with hundreds of private ones from which the American people could choose. That would be pluralistic. The public option Obama proposes would at best create a duopoly of power between insurance companies and the federal government, and at worst would create a monopoly of federal government power. Neither of these options even comes close to being pluralistic.