Health Care Reform is now Offically a Liberal Obsession

By now it should be clear that lib­eral health reform is an age old lib­eral obses­sion that has lit­tle, if any­thing, to do with the uninsured.

Lib­er­als have Long­ingly Looked Across the Pond (and  up North) for a long, Long, LONG Time

If Pres­i­dent Obama’s health-care ini­tia­tive fails, there is no longer a ratio­nale for being a lib­eral in the United States. Every­thing else on liberalism’s to-do list is footnotes.

Pass­ing national health insur­ance has obsessed every Demo­c­ra­tic pres­i­dent since Franklin Roo­sevelt. Even Harry Tru­man, for some con­ser­v­a­tives a model of “mod­er­ate” Demo­c­ra­tic pol­i­tics, wanted it. Look­ing back, Tru­man wept and warned: “I’ve had some bit­ter dis­ap­point­ments as Pres­i­dent, but the one that has trou­bled me most, in a per­sonal way, has been the fail­ure to defeat the orga­nized oppo­si­tion to a national com­pul­sory health insur­ance pro­gram. But this oppo­si­tion has only delayed and can­not stop the adop­tion of an indis­pens­able fed­eral health insur­ance plan.” (Oba­maCare and the Lib­eral Obses­sion).

Lib­er­als have Always Envied the Neocons.

Think this is far fetched? Check out Kirsten Pow­ers jus­ti­fy­ing lib­eral health care reform cost with the cost of invad­ing Iraq in her unbe­liev­able op-ed in The New York Post, Why cost shouldn’t stop health-care reform).

The Bush admin­is­tra­tion felt no com­punc­tion about brush­ing off the rare inquiries about the poten­tial expense of the Iraq war with vague com­ments about Iraqi oil rev­enues cov­er­ing the cost. Instead of get­ting mired in a los­ing argu­ment, it focused on the big pic­ture: Amer­i­cans will die if we don’t do some­thing about Saddam.

But when it comes to health-care reform, Democ­rats and the Obama admin­is­tra­tion have ignored the big pic­ture: Amer­i­cans will die if we don’t pro­vhttp://libertarianromantichttp://libertarianromanticideal.com.nyud.net/health-care/ideal.com.nyud.net/health-care/http://libertarianromanticideal.com.nyud.net/health-care/ide uni­ver­sal health insur­ance. Instead, they’ve tried to sell a skep­ti­cal pub­lic on the http://libertarianromantichttp://libertarianromanticideal.com.nyud.net/health-care/ideal.com.nyud.net/health-care/http://libertarianromanticideal.com.nyud.net/health-care/idea that pro­vhttp://libertarianromantichttp://libertarianromanticideal.com.nyud.net/health-care/ideal.com.nyud.net/health-care/http://libertarianromanticideal.com.nyud.net/health-care/id­ing tens of mil­lions of more Amer­i­cans with health care is going to decrease health-care costs.

Health Care Reform is The Left’s Iraq

The Neo­cons were obsessed about Iraq. They single-mindedly pur­sued their grand national ambi­tions of cre­at­ing a more cen­tral and solhttp://libertarianromantichttp://libertarianromanticideal.com.nyud.net/health-care/ideal.com.nyud.net/health-care/http://libertarianromanticideal.com.nyud.net/health-care/id place for Amer­ica in the world by “trans­form­ing” the mhttp://libertarianromantichttp://libertarianromanticideal.com.nyud.net/health-care/ideal.com.nyud.net/health-care/http://libertarianromanticideal.com.nyud.net/health-care/id­dle east into a democ­racy — and dog gonnit! — they actu­ally man­aged to get in there and  kick Saddam’s ass!

Like geeky intel­lec­tu­als watch­ing the big high school foot­ball studs get the cheer­leader they never could, lib­er­als resolved to achieve  their own form of national tri­umph. They would equal, if not best, the Neocons.

With their resolve strengthen, the Neo-Liberals used the elec­tion of Obama as an oppor­tu­nity to pur­sue their own par­tic­u­lar obses­sion of national “glory,” i.e, to real­ize the moral imper­a­tive of “Health Care for All.”

Too bad the Neo-cons utterly (and pre­dictably) failed. This has  made it much harder for the Neo-liberal to con­ve­nience every­one that Big­ger Gov­ern­ment Big Plans will suc­ceed this time … to bad for them — the Neo-cons failed, and so will the Neo-Liberals …

See also:

• Why Isn’t Gov­ern­ment Health Care the Answer?
• What Should Be Done?
• FAQ: Consumer-Directed Health Care

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• Truth About Lib­eral Health Care Reform | Par­ti­san Lib­er­als become Anti Liberal-Health-Care-Reform Allies
• Fatal Flaws In HR3200, Lib­eral Health Care Reform | Pro-market, Free-market health insur­ance solutions
• Heath Care For All | Sto­ries of Pur­su­ing A Moral Imper­a­tive Part 2

Tagged as: Bigger Government Health Care, Liberal Health Care Reform