Paul Krugman on The Governator’s health insurance plan, and Thomas Friedman on what will make him surge.

A few days ago. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger unveiled an ambitious plan to bring universal health insurance to California. And I’m of two minds about it.

On one side, it’s very encouraging to see another Republican governor endorse the principle that all Americans are entitled to essential health care. Not long ago we were wondering whether the Bush administration would succeed in dismantling Social Security. Now we’re discussing proposals for universal health care. What a difference two years makes!

And if California — America’s biggest state, with a higher-than-average percentage of uninsured residents — can achieve universal coverage, so can the nation as a whole.

On the other side, Mr. Schwarzenegger’s plan has serious flaws. Maybe those flaws could be fixed once the principle of universal coverage was established — but there’s also the chance that we would end up stuck with those flaws, the way we ended up stuck with a dysfunctional system of insurance tied to employment.

Furthermore, in the end health care should be a federal responsibility. State-level plans should be seen as pilot projects, not substitutes for a national system. Otherwise, some states just won’t do the right thing. Remember, almost 25 percent of Texans are uninsured.

To understand both what’s right and what’s wrong with Mr. Schwarzenegger’s plan, let’s compare what he’s proposing with the plan he rejected. Last summer, the California Legislature passed a bill that would have created a single-payer health insurance system for the state — that is, a system similar to Medicare, under which residents would have paid fees into a state fund, which would then have provided insurance to everyone.

But the governor vetoed that bill, which would have bypassed private insurance companies. He appears to sincerely want universal coverage, but he also wants to keep insurance companies in the loop. As a result, he came up with a plan that, like the failed Clinton health care plan of the early 1990s, is best described as a Rube Goldberg device — a complicated, indirect way of achieving what a single-payer system would accomplish simply and directly.

There are three main reasons why many Americans lack health insurance. Some healthy people decide to save money and take their chances (and end up being treated in emergency rooms, at the public’s expense, if their luck runs out); some people are too poor to afford coverage; some people can’t get coverage, at least without paying exorbitant rates, because of pre-existing conditions.

Single-payer insurance solves all three problems at a stroke. The Schwarzenegger plan, by contrast, is a series of patches. It forces everyone to buy health insurance, whether they think they need it or not; it provides financial aid to low-income families, to help them bear the cost; and it imposes “community rating” on insurance companies, basically requiring them to sell insurance to everyone at the same price.

As a result, the plan requires a much more intrusive government role than a single-payer system. Instead of reducing paperwork, the plan adds three new bureaucracies: one to police individuals to make sure they buy insurance, one to determine if they’re poor enough to receive aid, and one to police insurers to make sure they don’t discriminate against the unwell.

The plan’s supporters say that it would save money all the same. Those who are currently uninsured would receive preventive care, which is often cheaper than waiting until they show up in emergency rooms. Insurers would spend less money trying to weed out high-risk clients and more money actually paying for health care: the plan would require that insurers spend at least 85 percent of premiums on health care, considerably more than most of them do now.

Still, why all the complexity? The smart, well-intentioned economists who devised the plan think they’re being more politically realistic than single-payer advocates — that it’s necessary to placate the insurers. But that’s what Bill and Hillary Clinton thought, too — only to find that their plan’s complexity confused the public, while the insurance industry went all-out to defeat it anyway.

So am I for or against the Schwarzenegger plan? That’s a tough question. As a practical matter, however, I suspect that the real question is what to do after the plan founders from its own complexity. And the answer is, damn the insurers — full speed ahead.

Next up, Thomas Friedman on when he’ll “surge.”

I’ve heard the president’s surge speech, and I have a reaction, an observation and some advice.

My reaction to the president’s speech was to recall a line from Bill Maher’s book about the war against terrorists: “Make them fight all of us.”

Mr. President, you want a surge? I’ll surge. I’ll surge on the condition that you once and for all enlist the entire American people in this war effort, and stop putting it all on the shoulders of 130,000 military families, and now 20,000 more. I’ll surge on the condition that you make them fight all of us — and that means a real energy policy, with a real gasoline tax, that ends our addiction to oil, shrinks the flow of petro-dollars to bad actors and makes America the world’s leader in conservation.

But please, Mr. President, stop insulting our intelligence by telling us that this is the “decisive ideological struggle of our time,” but we’re going to put the whole burden of victory on 150,000 U.S. soldiers. Yes, you’re right, confronting violent Islamic radicalism by trying to tilt Iraq and the Arab-Muslim world onto a more progressive track is indeed hugely important. But the way you have fought this war — with our pinky — is contemptible. For three years you would not summon the military means to back your lofty ends.

That led to a vacuum. The Sunnis, who refused to accept majority rule by Shiites, went on a murderous rampage, and that rampage has now metastasized into five different wars in Iraq: Sunnis against Shiites; Sunnis and Shiites against the U.S. “occupiers”; Al Qaeda against the U.S.; Shiite theocratic thugs against ordinary Shiites; and Iran, Syria and all the Arab autocrats against any kind of democratic, Shiite-led Iraq that could be a model for their own people.

Hence my observation: The notion that the only war in Iraq now is good guys versus terrorists is ludicrous. There is no center in Iraq. And when there is no center and you put in more troops, you end up supporting a side. (See Lebanon: 1982)

And now for the advice. At this 11th hour, with Iraq’s sectarian fires raging, the only way more U.S. troops might bring stability is if you add two missing elements: a deadline and a floor.

You need to tell Iraqis that by calling for a surge in troops you’re giving them one last chance to reconcile, otherwise we’re gone by Dec. 1. And you need to tell Americans that you’re creating a $45-a-barrel floor price for imported oil, so investors can safely finance alternatives without worrying that they’ll be undercut by OPEC.

By not setting a hard date to leave Iraq, we are only putting a floor under bad behavior and allowing Iraqi leaders to pay wholesale, not retail, for their tribal politics. If Sunnis or Shiites want it “all” in Iraq, they have to pay for it all.

Of course, just leaving would be bad for us and terrible for those Iraqis who have worked with us. We need to give them all U.S. passports. We have a moral responsibility to them. But it would also be bad for a lot of bad people. They would be left to fight it out with each other. And yes, Syria and Iran would “win” Iraq — meaning they’d win the responsibility of managing the mess there or have it spill over on them. Have a nice day.

And by not setting a hard floor price for oil to promote alternative energy, we are only helping to subsidize bad governance by Arab leaders toward their people and bad behavior by Americans toward the climate.

Make them fight all of us, Mr. President, or don’t do it at all! If we made ourselves energy independent, we would bring down global oil prices, which would not only shrink the resources for mischief by our enemies and limit Saudi Arabia’s ability to transform Islam all over the world into its most intolerant Wahhabi form, but also, more important, would force the Arab world to reform. It would force Arab leaders, including Iraqis, to organize their societies in ways that would tap their people, not just their oil wells — whether our troops were there or not. Also, if the rest of the world saw all of us sacrificing to win this war, we might actually be able to enlist them to help a little.

More troops alone will not suffice. The only tiny hope left of transforming Iraq is if its leaders have to pay the full retail price of their passions and we have to pay the full retail price of our oil. And if even that won’t work, then setting a date and setting an oil price will extract us from this disaster and make us less vulnerable to the madness we leave behind.

If we fail in Iraq, at least let America be stronger — by being energy independent — the morning after.