Last night Democrat Kathy Hochul upset Republican Jane Corwin in the blood red New York 26th Congressional District special election -- largely because of Corwin's support for the House Republican plan to end Medicare.
Her victory comes on the heels of a month during which Republicans have been battered for their vote to end Medicare at town halls across America and polls that show their plan is radioactive.
Maybe last night's election will be the alarm that awakens the Republican establishment from their dream-like fantasy that -- as much as the right hates Medicare -- the American people don't agree.
Memo to Republicans: snap out of it! Americans love Medicare and there is nothing you're going to do to change that.
Of course, the Republican right has hated Medicare since it was first passed in 1965.
At that time Ronald Reagan, who was a spokesman for the AMA, railed against Medicare as the harbinger of socialism in the United States.
Thirty years later, Newt Gingrich waxed eloquent about the Republican plan to allow Medicare to "wither on the vine."
And just this Spring, Congressman Paul Ryan managed to convince all but four Republicans in the House to vote for a plan to end Medicare and to put seniors back at the mercy of private insurance companies -- this time with a plan that provided partial "premium support". You can call that whatever you like -- maybe "partial care" or "coupon care" -- but it's not Medicare. Really, what were they thinking?
The thing is that Republicans can't seem to remember that every time they grab the third rail of opposition to Medicare they are very nearly electrocuted.
You'd think they'd remember that after they had scored an overwhelming victory against the Democrats and Bill Clinton in 1994, it was the battle between Newt Gingrich and Clinton over cuts to Medicare that turned the political tide and helped assure Clinton's re-election in 1996. Democrats accused Gingrich of wanting to cut Medicare to give tax breaks to the rich. Sound familiar?
Well, Newt Gingrich himself apparently did remember, when he called the Ryan plan "right wing social engineering" -- only to be sent off by the party's right wing ideologues, with his tail between his legs like a dog that chewed up his master's favorite shoe.
You'd think the Republicans would remember the damage that was done by the 1996 Democratic spot that showed Republican Presidential candidate Bob Dole making a speech to conservatives where he bragged: "I was there fighting the fight, voting against Medicare."
You'd think they would remember that just a few short months ago, their own ads blatantly, falsely and effectively pandered to the public's love affair with Medicare by claiming that the health care reform bill had "cut Medicare."
They are like Dr. Strangelove in the famous 1960's movie. The Doctor -- a German former scientist -- had an irrepressible tick. No matter how hard he tried he could not help periodically snapping out a Nazi salute. The right wing of the Republican Party can't help themselves when it comes to trying to eliminate Medicare. To them, the basic idea of Medicare is an abomination.
Basically this is a question of values. They don't believe that we're all in this together. They believe that we're all in this alone -- that you're on your own, buddy. They don't believe that government is the name we give for the things we choose to do together. In other words, they believe -- like their ideological mentor author Ayn Rand -- in a society where the strong dominate everyone else - in essence a society based on social Darwinism. And they positively reject the notion that our top priority should be to create a society where everyone can achieve their full potential -- a society with shared prosperity a strong middle class.
To them it just doesn't compute that Medicare is the most efficient system to deliver health insurance -- and that people like the idea that they are guaranteed coverage of their health care needs in their senior years. They simply dismiss the fact that Medicare spends -- depending upon how you count it - from 3% to 6% of total outlay on administrative costs and private insurers spend from 26% to 30%. I guess when the facts don't conform to your pre-conceived ideological view, it's just easier to dismiss the facts.
Medicare is a "fact on the ground" that demonstrates that all of their theorizing about how big corporations always do things more efficiently than government is a fairy tale.
That's why initiates in the cult of right wing orthodoxy are made to take a blood oath to destroy Medicare and Social Security.
But Medicare is an example of the political axiom that once something is a "fact on the ground" it is very hard to destroy. It's one thing to prevent people from getting the things they aspire to. It is much harder to force them to give up something they love and already have. That's why the right is desperate to undo the Affordable Health Care Act before its provisions themselves become "facts on the ground" too. When they do, everyday Americans will like what they see. And they will see that just as Medicare was not, as the right warned, the beginning of the Soviet conquest of America - heath care reform will not bring "death panels" to seniors' bedsides.
In the meantime, yesterday's defeat in the New York 26th District, the shellacking they are taking at town meetings, and the fusillade of angry calls to Republican offices have begun to cause panic in the Republican ranks. The Empire struck back last fall. The progressive counter-offensive has begun.
Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on Amazon.com. He is a partner in the firm Democracy Partners. Follow him on Twitter @rbcreamer.
Follow Robert Creamer on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rbcreamer
Definely we could have a geniunely great system, if the voters would just completely, stop putting the parasitic garbage into offices. “But what can ya do, except accept whatcha got folks.’
So "progressives", please explain how GOVERNMENT GUARANTEED HEALTH CARE, WHICH IT IS SINCE HEALTH CARE IS A "RIGHT", BRINGS DOWN HEALTH CARE COSTS, instead of what happens WITH EVERY GOVERNMENT PROGRAM OR MONOPOLY ENTERPRISE: HIGH PRICES, SCARCE CARE DEMANDED BY EVERYBODY, REAL COSTS KICKED DOWN THE ROAD TO THE NEXT GENERATION!!
South Korea, for example spends 5% on government maintained healthcare, we spend over 33%. Doctors in many countries, are paid salaries, leveling the doctor hospital costs, and reducing many costs. I suspect you already know all this, so whats up with you yelling? Nothing, I suppose, right? Come on now, we can run it efficiently if we put efficient programs in place. Sure nothing is perfect, its just we are running a trainwreck, looking for a time to happen. And people not paying attention is the fuel for the wreck.
Unbelievable.
Americans love ACCESS TO THE HEALTH CARE THEY WANT!!
Medicare "guarantees" are like any OTHER government "guarantee": an unfilled promise. Higher costs, wage and price controls bullied on the health care industry, fraud and waste, cronyism and, pushing we consumers as patients AWAY from contact with Health Care providers!!
Government "guarantees" have gone a huge step further, with so-called "private" insurance covered by anti-trust laws, manipulated into highly regulated mini-monopolies by State regulators, and encouraged since FDR to offer "pre-negotiated" procedures and supplies from the Health Care providers...in other words, MORE OF THE SAME; WAGE AND PRICE CONTROLS behind the backs of patients as consumers!
BRING ON CONSUMER PROTECTION, AND CONSUMER POWER: GET RID OF THE GOVERNMENT MIDDLE-MAN AND ITS PANEL OF SELF-ANOINTED EXPERTS PICKING AND CHOOSING OUR HEALTH CARE, so WE can pick what WE want for ourselves.
FREE UP INSURANCE COMPANIES to do what they're supposed to: offer health care FINANCING to we consumers, across state lines, writing policies WE, not the government, not a panel of "experts", want: mainly inexpensive policies for chronic conditions, long-term care, catastrophic care (accidents, heart attacks, etc.).
John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, offers employees a good start in this direction:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204251404574342170072865070.html
POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!!
and it won't cover nursing home expenses ....
its a horrible deal ......
Explanation, please.
And how does the CURRENT government-controlled industry avoid such exhorbitant costs??
Because they think that the average American voter is stupid and short-sightedly selfish.
So they think that if they can structure the con-game just right----with the just the right amount of misrepresentation, misdirection, resentment and fear-mongering----they can get a majority to fall for legislating Medicare out of existence.
Whether or not they are right (in reality) is beside the point....they believe that they are right...and can pull it off, eventually.
Author Sue Schell
These guys want to shove grandma off the cliff, and grandma sees right through their schtick.
The GOP doesn't want to fix the cost problem....they just want to shift the primary burden for those cost from the rich to the middle-and-working classes.
Democrats want to fix the cost problem by (finally) flexing the market muscle that Medicare has due to the millions of seniors that it acts as a gate-keeper for. (Private insurance companies do this all the time in negotiating rates with doctors and hospitals.) Flexing that muscle would allow Medicare to cut costs by obtaining volume-discounts from both drug companies, and medical supply companies. Just like Medicare currently does with reimbursement rates with doctors and hospitals.
...and guarenteed a "Tea Party" primary challenge.
2. If LIBERAL Democrats had their way...yes. But not all Democrats are liberals. Many Democrats from either Red States or from Swing States ("Blue Dogs") are (and have to be) more fiscally conservative in their views.
If they weren't, they'd get voted out of office by their constituents.
The problem is that their masters----The Conservative Movement, and the interlocking system of think-tanks, millionaires and billionaires who bankroll the party----are not. They see their claw being (or at least at-risk of being) pried off the lever of political power...
...and they want these New Deal/Great Society programs---and their obligation to progressively fund them---GONE. So that there is no ceiling over their heads, and no set of brakes, to impede how much wealth they can accumulate.