Vol. 1.0.0

Democrats Lose Control of the Health Care Reform Debate

by Christopher Skyi on August 9, 2009

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Democ­rats Bun­gled Their Case on Health Care Reform

It seems — no, scratch that — it is incred­i­ble that Democ­rats and pro­gresses who have con­trol of both houses and the exec­u­tive branch could be in this much trou­ble over health care reform.

How­ever, as incred­i­ble as it might seem, the rea­son is both sim­ple and under­stand­able: pro­gres­sives and Democ­rats have so bun­gled in mak­ing their par­tic­u­lar case for health care reform that just about every­one is con­fused :

.…accord­ing to a Gallup poll released last week, only 47 per­cent of Democ­rats said that they had a good under­stand­ing of the issues involved in the cur­rent health care debate. Fifty-eight per­cent of the Repub­li­cans polled said that they understood.

Fur­ther­more, a Pew Research Cen­ter poll released on Thurs­day found that Democ­rats were the least likely to say that they were fol­low­ing the debate over health care reform “very closely.” Only 42 per­cent of Democ­rats said that they were, com­pared with 45 per­cent of the inde­pen­dents and 56 per­cent of the Repub­li­cans polled.

And while Democ­rats are sit­ting it out, Repub­li­cans are storm­ing in.

The end result is that the national debate is now rife with con­fus­ing claims and out­right dis­tor­tions.

(As an inter­est­ing aside, all this raises the ques­tion: if Democ­rats and pro­gresses can’t even man­age a debate about health care with­out los­ing con­trol, how are they sup­pose to man­age actual health care?)

In the end, the root of the prob­lem has been that the debate over health care in Wash­ing­ton D.C. has been lop-sided in favor of even more gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion into health care, and most peo­ple just don’t have a lot of faith in the “plans” and promises of big gov­ern­ment:

P.S. Oh, about the pissed-off “orga­nized” mobs infil­trat­ing town hall meet­ings? Some­one should remind The Left that this is as Amer­i­can as apple pie and .38 special:

[This Is Now] A num­ber of peo­ple in the news analy­sis busi­ness seem to be equat­ing the role of lib­eral activists in mak­ing trou­ble for Repub­li­cans back in 2005, dur­ing the debate over Social Secu­rity pri­va­ti­za­tion, with that of con­ser­v­a­tive activists in mak­ing trou­ble for Democ­rats over health care reform… Seri­ously, I’ve been search­ing through news reports on the Social Secu­rity town halls, and I can’t find any exam­ples of the kind of behav­ior we’re see­ing now… The cam­paign against Social Secu­rity pri­va­ti­za­tion was ener­getic and no doubt rude, but did not involve intim­i­da­tion and dis­rup­tion. (Paul Krug­man, One of these things is not like the other, NYTimes 08 . 08 . 2009).

[This Is Now 4 Years Ago] “Shaken by rau­cous protests at open “town hall”-style meet­ings last month … San­to­rum was among dozens of mem­bers of Con­gress who ran gantlets of demon­stra­tors and shouted over heck­lers at Social Secu­rity events last month. Many who showed up to protest were alerted by e-mails and bused in by anti-Bush orga­ni­za­tions such as MoveOn.org and USAc­tion, a lib­eral advo­cacy group. They came with pre­pared ques­tions and instruc­tions on how to con­front law­mak­ers.” (Andrea Stone, GOP boards up the ‘town hall, ‘USA TODAY 03 . 16 . 2005).

Hat Tip: Don­ald L. Luskin.

The Real Goal of Demo­c­ra­tic Health Care Reform

 

If you’re inter­ested in read­ing about pro-market solu­tions to our cur­rent health care cri­sis, visit Cato On Health Care Reform or check out these links:

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Tagged as: Democrats, Health Care Reform

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Health Care Reform Has Nothing To Do With Doctors | Get Ready For More Political Warfare & Civil Unrest | Libertarian Romantic Ideal
August 11, 2009 at 4:52 am

{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

Gman August 10, 2009 at 2:33 pm

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/07/weekend-opinionator-a-sick-debate/

August 7, 2009, 8:13 pm
Week­end Opin­ion­a­tor: A Sick Debate
By Tobin Harshaw

(com­ment) 12. August 8, 2009 1:57 am Link
I have lived in Europe, the USA (NYC and FLA) and cur­rently live in Canada. I am a rea­son­ably well-informed finan­cial exec­u­tive. I make my liv­ing as a capitalist.

I wouldn’t know where to begin re: the health care debate but I will make a cou­ple of observations:

1. The USA has the finest health care in the world — bar none — pro­vided that you have a no-limit gilt-edged money is no object health plan. Or you are rich. In my expe­ri­ence the 2 go hand in hand.

Fail­ing such insur­ance or such bound­less wealth how any ratio­nal human being with an IQ over 75 and an income below, say, $250k (for­get the social com­pas­sion argu­ment) could defend the exist­ing sys­tem is beyond comprehension.

2. The out­right lies — yes lies — that crit­ics of health care reform spew is dis­turb­ing. The inten­tional mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Cana­dian and Euro­pean mod­els is out­ra­geous. The Cana­dian model is flawed. There needs to be greater access to ‘private-delivery’ alter­na­tives (which cur­rently exist in some fields.) Hav­ing said that, since I returned to the province of Ontario in the late 1990’s until now the improve­ment in stan­dards and care is stag­ger­ing and in most cases matches any­thing I wit­nessed or expe­ri­enced in NYC. Yes, health care is rationed here (hence a need for ancil­lary pri­vate care) but it is rationed every­where — includ­ing the US. The excep­tion being as per point #1 above. Per capita Ontario spends approx­i­mately 65% of what the consumers/taxpayers of the US/NY spend. How­ever Ontario deliv­ers 90% — or more — of the US stan­dard. That is one very big financial/efficiency/productivity gap. That money gap goes to the US insur­ance com­pa­nies, doc­tors, mal­prac­tice lawyers and lob­by­ists. The com­mon canard about Canada etc is that “face­less bureau­crats make life or death deci­sions” (as opposed to, say, face­less HMO clerks). The truth is that in Canada the ‘gate­keep­ers’ who allo­cate crit­i­cal care are the physi­cians them­selves — the specialists.

3. Aside from private-payment plas­tic sur­geons it is true you will not see many doc­tors in Canada dri­ving a Rolls Royce. But you will see an awful lot dri­ving a Benz or a Jag. Doc­tors here work hard and are well com­pen­sated. What we lack here is the con­cept that a med­ical degree should be attrib­uted Ven­ture Cap­i­tal­ist returns.

4. Lastly, a gen­eral observation/question (again, I really am a cap­i­tal­ist). Why is it that in the USA (a coun­try I gen­uinely love) mil­lions of peo­ple who barely make a liv­ing or are work­ing class and/or just hold­ing on to the ‘mid­dle class’ are the most vocal — hys­ter­i­cal wouldn’t be an exag­ger­a­tion — in defend­ing the priv­i­leges of the rich and the cor­po­rate? Against their own self-interest I might add. Any­where else in the west­ern world the exist­ing US health care tyranny would have peo­ple in the streets demand­ing reform — not ‘debat­ing’ it.

— jon c

[Reply]

Christopher Skyi Reply:
August 10th, 2009 at 6:11 pm

Hi Jon — thank you for your comment.

“Why is it that in the USA (a coun­try I gen­uinely love) mil­lions of peo­ple who barely make a liv­ing or are work­ing class and/or just hold­ing on to the ‘mid­dle class’ are the most vocal — hys­ter­i­cal wouldn’t be an exag­ger­a­tion — in defend­ing the priv­i­leges of the rich and the cor­po­rate? Against their own self-interest I might add. Any­where else in the west­ern world the exist­ing US health care tyranny would have peo­ple in the streets demand­ing reform — not ‘debat­ing’ it.”

This is a great question.

I’ll point you to a sur­pris­ingly rea­son­able post, by a right-winger no less, who shows con­sid­er­able insight into why the “repub­lic appears to gone off the deep end” when it comes to “talk­ing about” health care reform. It’s cyn­i­cal, funny, and dead accurate:

PALIN’S OUTRAGEOUS DEMAGOGUERY: WHY NOT? EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING IT.

In the end, it’s a ques­tion of trust and cred­i­bil­ity, and on the issue of health care reform, which we badly need, it seems Democ­rats and pro­gresses are per­ceived to have not much of either, right or wrong. Peo­ple are more fright­ened on the devil we don’t know (health care reform) than the devil (the sta­tus quo) that we do. This is a prob­lem lib­eral reformer need to solve. This “cri­sis” for lib­eral reform­ers is a real oppor­tu­nity, if they take advan­tage of it. Call­ing frighten, admit­tedly mis-informed and mis-guided peo­ple “thugs,” “mobs,” and “racists,” is just throw­ing gaso­line on the flames.

P.S. and it IS bad health care reform. Even some pro­gres­sives are ask­ing: Is A Bad Health Care Reform Bill Bet­ter Than None? Some of them are answer­ing “no.”

[Reply]

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