Why are John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Mitch McConnell so intent on stopping health care reform from ever taking hold? For the same reason that Republicans and the corporate Right spent more than $200 million in the last year to demonize health care in swing Congressional districts. It wasn't just about trying to stop the bill from becoming law or taking over Congress. It is because health reform, if it takes hold, will create a bond between the American people and government, just as Social Security and Medicare have done. Democrats, and all those who believe that government has a positive place in our lives, should remember how much is at stake as Republicans and corporate elites try to use their electoral victory to dismantle the new health care law.
My enjoyment of the MLB playoffs last month was interrupted by ads run by Karl Rove's Crossroads front group against upstate New York Rep. Scott Murphy, who was defeated last Tuesday. Rove's ads rained accusations on Murphy, including the charge of a "government takeover of health care." Some might have thought that once the public option was removed from the health care legislation, Republicans couldn't make that charge. But it was never tied to the public option or any other specific reform. Republicans and their allies, following the advice of message guru Frank Luntz, were going to call whatever Democrats proposed a government takeover.
There's nothing new here. Throughout American history, health care reform has been attacked as socialist. An editorial published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in December 1932, just after FDR's election, claimed that proposals for compulsory insurance "were socialism and communism -- inciting to revolution." The PR firm that the American Medical Association hired to fight Truman's push for national health insurance succeeded in popularizing a completely concocted quote that it attributed to Vladimir Lenin: "Socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the Socialist State."
In 1961, Ronald Reagan made an LP recording for an AMA front group called Operation Coffeecup entitled "Ronald Reagan speaks out against SOCIALIZED MEDICINE," in which the future President says that Medicare will be the foot in the door to a totalitarian takeover. Almost half a century later, Sarah Palin quoted Reagan's words during her speech accepting the Republican nomination for Vice-President.
The famous "Harry and Louise" ads that helped sink the Clinton health plan railed against "new mandatory government health alliances run by tens of thousands of new bureaucrats" and concluded "if we let the government choose, we lose."
The Right has always understood how high the American view of the role of government would be lifted if people came to rely on government for something as essential to a person's well-being as health care. This year, the animus that the Right maintains toward the New Deal and Great Society programs and philosophy -- Social Security, Medicare, the constitution allowing the federal public to regulate commerce -- has become visible in the Tea Party movement. The last thing that the corporate and ideological Right want is for health care to be a new pillar added to the foundation of government social insurance.
While Republicans are wrong to call the Affordable Care Act a government takeover of health care, they understand more than many critics on the Left that the new law does profoundly change the relationship between Americans and the government and health care. The heart of the law is a government promise that health coverage will be affordable to almost all Americans, through expanding Medicaid to the poor, providing subsidies for private insurance to working and middle class families, or placing responsibility on medium and large employers to help pay for coverage for their employees. If the ACA is fully implemented, Americans will come to see they will no longer have to worry about going bankrupt, or being locked into a job, or going untreated for serious illness. And they will see that government, and Democrats, did that.
Now that Republicans control the House, they will do everything in their power to delay, defund and disrupt implementation of the Affordable Care Act. They will be assisted in that by another huge wave of advertising and Astroturf lobbying funded by groups like Rove's Crossroads, which will now have to spend as much on lobbying as they spent on political ads in order to maintain the tax status that allows them to operate in the dark, without disclosing donors.
President Obama and Democrats in Congress understood the historical importance and profound moral underpinnings of the new health care law when they enacted it earlier this year. And they knew that the right-wing attack had soured the public in swing Congressional districts and states on reform. They stood up then. They will have to stand up again, understanding that if they give way to Republicans, they lose more than the expansion of health coverage. They lose the best opportunity in half a century to prove to Americans that government can be a force for the common good.
Cross-posted from New Deal 2.0.
Mr. Kirsch’s analysis of the Teapublican war on Health Care Reform and entitlements is interesting but fundamentally incorrect. This is not a civic “bonding” exercise. The American public may dislike decisions made by government and, but they are bonded by tradition, ceremony, education and emotion to this country and its traditions. Kirsch believes this a“hearts and minds” strategy. It that doesn't work in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is bunk.
Instead, I have a darker, conspiratorial view that is based upon a secret agenda that has been created in the hidden chambers of the House and Senate and out on the yachts:
The population of the US has tripled since the Social Security was signed into law. And doubled since Medicare was enacted. Baby boomers are moving out of the workforce and onto these programs. 1996 Actuarial tables indicated that a 65 year old male will live 15 years; a 65 year old female will survive nearly 20 years (source: http://www.efmoody.com/estate/lifeexpectancy.html). Life expectancy (in 1940 it was 62 years and 66 years respectively), is correlated with the reduction of physical labor among workers, improved nutrition and health care. Hundreds of millions of us will draw social security checks and medical cost assistance long after retirement.
And for what purpose? Those who believe that a large middle class still exists are wrong. We are disposables-- the human equivalent of emptied water bottles and used Pampers. We have no recognizable value as workers and our value as taxpayers is diminishing. So, the right says, "Get rid of the malcontents who question outsourcing jobs abroad. Stop funding schools and libraries. An educated public is no longer cost beneficial.
The grand plan of the ascendant plutocracy is to slow population growth by ending health insurance benefits for the old, ill, poor, young, and minorities. The very rich have seen what universal health care has meant in Scandinavia and in Japan, where people have long life expectancies and are non-productive economic drains.
They don’t carry worthless inventory in their businesses. Why should they carry worthless inventory in the population? Their motto? "Let's throw out the trash!"
" If the ACA is fully implemented, Americans will come to see they will no longer have to worry about going bankrupt, or being locked into a job, or going untreated for serious illness."
It seems to me from the above quote that Americans can live free from fear from these things.
Anything seeking to stop that is a function of evil. Evil seeks to control people. I think that sadly describes the GOP.
How poetic that our first African American President freed everyone from this bondage.
Does this generation have what it takes to fight back? Will we passively accept our (very fast) national downfall? Why not consider reaching out to each other -- networking, if you prefer -- to find a way to get a few hundred thousand Americans to pay a visit to Congress in DC? (Sorry, the masses can't afford plane fare and hotel reservations -- we'd have to help each other, ala Martin Luther King's Poor People's March.) Our lives might depend on it. Seriously.
I am in favor of expanding Medicare to include every American citizen. This would allow the insurance companies to stay in business although with a different business model.
For the next or perhaps 6 years the tone in Washington will be to destroy all things Obama.
What a waste of taxpayer dollars.
You know, the US does have a fully socialized health care system: The VA. Contrary to many of the rumors, the VA does provide high quality care very efficiently. It leads the way in integrative medicine. In my case, the VA saved my life, and I get better care now than when I was fully employed and had good insurance. I worry all the time that this next congress will gut the VA and I will join the millions of Americans without access to care. In fact, I often experience a kind of "survivor's guilt." I'm uninsured and uninsurable, yet I have the VA only because I enlisted in the Army during the recession of 1980. It isn't fair, I don't see myself as more deserving than any of the other 50 million uninsured.
Are there problems? Well, of course. And you can kill any system by starving it, which is my fear. And when you hear that the Government cannot run anything efficiently, think about what starvation does to efficiency.
You deserve no less than the very best medical care your fellow Americans can provide for you.
Please do watch Washington closely to make sure your rights are protected. There are great numbers of former service people. You have the power of numbers.
If the Republican Party was Christian they would want the Government to provide Health Care for all just like Jesus Christ did !
But, the Republican Party Ain't Christian !
Nita
The GOP wants the goverment off healthcare because the main culprit THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY want to keep the gold mine open !
''Socialized '' medicine or Highway robberry medecine ?
Wall street wants no regulation from the goverment for the same reason the insurance industry doesn't want the goverment meddling with their business...So that they can bleed you dry !
This is not some conspiracy...This is your reality !
If you currently have employer-provided healthcare, ask yourself "do you actually know how much it costs to go to the doctor?" When was the last time you asked a doctor, how much will this procedure cost?