Grassley to Limbaugh: Keep Distorting Health Reform

This post originally appeared at CJR.org.

Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and others recently launched a smear campaign against a provision in the stimulus bill designed to gather research that will help doctors and patients choose the treatments that work the best, and avoid unnecessary spending. This, said Fox, “appear [s]to set the stage for health care rationing for seniors, new limits on medical research, and new rules guiding decisions doctors can make about your health care.”

At an event this morning at the Kaiser Family Foundation, I asked Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) -- who, as the ranking minority member of the Senate Finance Committee, arguably has more influence on the fate of health reform than any other member of his party -- whether such distortions from the right-wing noise machine will make it harder to get the bipartisan compromise he says he wants. Though the senator endorsed this kind of effectiveness research, he paradoxically also encouraged conservative commentators to keep doing what they’re doing:

“I think they ought to hype them right now because people’s attention needs to be brought to it, and that’s the only way you’re going to get their attention. When the dust settles, they won’t have a leg to stand on and we will have and we will have a study and a tool that will be useful for doctors to use but not to dictate medicine.”

This should unnerve those who remember the collapse of President Clinton’s reform effort in the early nineties. One of the major reasons his efforts foundered was that the interest groups who opposed the plan were able to stoke fears of “government-run health care” through a sustained media campaign. The issues in health reform are especially susceptible to alarmism, because they’re extremely complicated to understand and tap into deep-seated fears that people won’t get care when they need it most.

If Grassley is serious about the bipartisan reform he says he wants, he should remember the effect of the now-infamous “Harry and Louise” ads the health insurance industry ran against the Clinton plan. “The government may force us to choose from a few plans designed by government bureaucrats,” an ominous voice intoned as a couple sit at their kitchen table wading through health insurance paper work. Chip Kahn, one of the architects of this commercial, says that they didn’t intend for this advertisement to sink health reform, but rather help insurers negotiate a better deal. But in the political climate of the time, it activated public suspicion that, ultimately, overwhelmed the reform effort.

This morning, Senator Grassley also made a policy statement that suggests he may be less helpful in reaching bipartisan consensus than reform advocates have hoped. He previously made very clear that he opposes a public health insurance plan that could compete alongside private insurance and bring down costs -- a top priority for progressives. But when asked how he would make the market more competitive in a place like Iowa, where one insurer controls more than 50 percent of the market, he suggested allowing insurers to sell policies across state lines -- a key plank in Senator McCain’s health reform proposal when he was the Republican presidential nominee. This would make it very hard for a federal plan that would create the kind of state-by-state “exchanges” that give consumers the information they need to get the best premiums and coverage package.

Senator Grassley was generally enthusiastic about reform and bipartisanship, but these comments suggest we’ll have to wait and see exactly what kind of role he will play.

This post originally appeared at CJR.org, the website of the Columbia Journalism Review.

Comments

[KathieKH]

I am embarressed to call him my senator. I write to him all the time and get the same old - same old answer about why he is against everything I believe in. I used to vote for him because I thought he represented the best interest of Iowans - heck he even got money for a rain forest here in Iowa, LOL But I can no longer support him and I have told him that. He doesn't care about anyone other than his cronies in the senate. They have guaranteed income, insurance and pension, not something the rest of us can say. I say either put us on the health care plan that they have or force them to buy private insurance. I am tired of politicans telling us what they think and not listening to what we think. They are our REPRESTNTATIVES, not our dictators and I think we need to all step up and remind them of that.

[iver]

And what tit would Grassley be sucking on when it comes to health care in America? Evidently his own health care is very well endowed (by US taxpayers). There is more than enough for him to suck on, and to heck with rest of us.

[JM817]

When are we finally going to join the advanced nations of this world? Someone just needs to run a few ads that make two key and very true points:

1. Our health care is more expensive than anybody's.
2. In 44 nations in the world, life expectancy exceeds ours.

Hmmm. Costs more and is less effective. That sounds like a good reason to leave things the way they are.

[schatsie]

It costs us a Billion dollars every day we put off Single Payer... I billion dollars every day......
The Medicare system can handle it. the medicaid system might not. but it could be brought up to snuff in 2 years....and if all children can get Medicaid then we are half way there... and put the military on Medicare now....No more private pay for the Veterans....My parents went bankrupt from my brothers agent orange surgery that killed him....

[Bitsko]

What does Rush know about Health, no less Health Reform? The man is a wreck!

[toddag]

Banks were allowed to start operating across state lines which led to Citi, Wells Fargo, BoA, and the other "too big to fail" banks that have brought down our economy. Grassley and McCain want to repeat the same thing with Health Care.

[JRsNana]

Great. Here we go again.

[Gidster]

Maybe Grassley needs the program explained to him in short easy to understand language.
Either that or he is against policies that benefit Americans.

[biglefty]

grassley,another "patriot" who has insurance and couldn't care less for those who don't.

[Davwbaird]

His role, no.