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Froma Harrop: Americans Can Speak for Themselves on Health Care
Have you voted on any of the Democratic health-care reform plans? Me neither.
No such vote was ever taken. But with coordination that The Rockettes would envy, Republicans insist that “the American people have spoken” on the matter, and they want the proposals killed.
House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio: “The American people have spoken, loudly and clearly: They do not want Washington Democrats’ government takeover of health care.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.: “The American people do not want this bill to pass.”
Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele: “The American people have spoken. The White House hasn’t heard their message.”
Quite a coincidence, these guys saying the same thing on the same day. No matter. What they’re saying is nonsense.
All politicians try, but Republicans excel at creating a fantasy public always marching behind their baton. What the Republican leaders lack in veracity, they make up for in confidence.
They base their public mind-reading on polls showing displeasure with the Democrats’ reform legislation (or what the public thinks is in it). They ignore polls that don’t.
Some Americans are unhappy with the lack of a public option in the Senate bill, others with its inclusion in the House version. Many already have their government-guaranteed health coverage and don’t want to share. Almost everyone detests the “Cornhusker kickback,” a special deal arranged by Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb.
And how does one count strong opinions by those who don’t have the foggiest idea what’s really in the bills — but who are taking their talking orders from partisan yakkers?
It’s worth noting that President Barack Obama’s proposal, based on the Senate bill, doesn’t include a public option. It eliminates the Cornhusker kickback. It eases up on the controversial tax on so-called Cadillac health plans. And in an appeal to older voters, it does away with the Medicare drug benefit’s “doughnut hole.”
The public option has been the most demagogued item in the entire health-care debate — not because it’s a bad, or even radical, idea but because the deep-pocketed insurance industry opposes it. Republicans have been portraying it, a government-run insurance plan to compete with private options, as a socialist Satan intent on destroying The American Way. The public option has been burning at their stake for so long, it’s a wonder there’s even an ash left of support for it.
But a recent Newsweek poll has 50 percent of Americans still favoring a public option and 48 percent opposed. That the administration refused to strenuously defend a cost-saving device that always enjoyed widespread backing is something I’ll never understand (and may never forgive). Nonetheless, health-care reform must pass — with or without the public option.
The last time “the American people” came close to officially speaking on this subject was in November 2008, when they elected a Democratic president and expanded the Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate. It’s mind-boggling that any sophisticated analyst would attribute Republican Scott Brown’s surprise victory in the Massachusetts special senatorial election to public rejection of government-guaranteed health care. As a Massachusetts state senator, Brown voted for a universal coverage plan that’s a lot less conservative than what’s on deck in Washington.
The Newsweek poll also asked for feelings about the job that Obama and congressional Democrats and Republicans were doing on health-care reform. Some 52 percent disapproved of Obama’s performance, 61 percent disapproved of the congressional Democrats’, and 63 percent disapproved of the congressional Republicans’.
No one is walking away from this with an Academy Award, but what’s coming out of Republican leaders’ mouths clearly isn’t what’s coming out of the American people’s. The people will speak definitively on Nov. 2.
— Froma Harrop is an independent voice on politics, economics and culture, and blogs on RealClearPolitics.com. She is also a member of the editorial board at The Providence (R.I.) Journal. Click here to contact her at Creators.com.
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» on 03.01.10 @ 11:03 AM
Good grief Froma where have you been the last year, Venus? The president’s bill does not eliminate the “cornhusker kickback” it just extends the bribe to all states. It does not easy up on Cadillac health insurance taxes but offers the same to all insurance. And it does nothing to plug the “doughnut hole” in Medicare only passes the costs on to the tax payers. The public option does nothing to increase the supply of medical care. It only provides an uncompetitive insurance option which can only perform if heavily subsidized by tax payer dollars. It is supply of medical care that is driving costs sky high and the reason is clear as crystal, the AMA limiting the number of qualified doctors and government regulation that is largely the result of lawyers doing what they do best, getting in the way, and rather expensively to boot. The reason Obamacare is flaming out right now is that no one, not even the miraculously intelligent Miss Froma knows what’s in the damned bill. It was put together behind closed doors with an air of elitist contempt for the American people and finally, Froma, the purpose of Obamacare is not to provide quality care for everyone but rather to push the American economy toward a socialist state. It is obvious to anyone with a brain not so soaked in party ideology that they can smell a scam when they sniff one.
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» on 03.01.10 @ 03:52 PM
While the insurance and big Pharma lobbies circle the wagon train, picking off
the more timid pioneers as they try to travel west, toward the promised land of
health care reform, Harrop has pretty well nailed it, head on.
While politicos who themselves have low cost access to super-premium health
packages argue on, millions and millions of Americans must cope with rising
rates (during a 1.5% inflation rate).
Cope with deductibles larger than the old Humvee assembly line.
Cope with “pre-existing condition” caveats that bump or kill coverage for anyone who’s ever had any kind of metabolic, cardio-vascular, or cancer “event”.
Tens of millions of our neighbors can afford no insurance at all. Each time they
appear at the nation’s ERs, hospital costs spike again.
Meanwhile, instead of “government ‘death committees’, ” patients and doctors
are hectored and harried at every turn by insurance company “death committees”.
Sheesh.
Anyone who truly believes significant reform is not urgently needed either has
been living in an opaque ideological bubble all their lives, or has never (yet)
faced a serious illness in their family, and discovered what their coverage will
actually provide them.
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» on 03.03.10 @ 04:51 PM
Publius, where in the world do you get this notion that anybody would not want to reform our healthcare system? I cannot find anyone in government saying that, haven’t heard it from tea party members, no one I know says that. Are you implying that if we disagree with Obamacare that we don’t want reform? Tell me where the reform is in the bills produced so far. Why is a public option a reform? Does reform include tort law, insurance portability? If so why are they not found in any of the democrat bills? Why does reform mean more demand on the healthcare system but no incentive for increasing supply? In fact the bills presented today actually de-incentivize growth and end up shrinking supply faster than it is now.
All we on the right are asking you on the left to do is pay for what you want. No, really we want you to earn it and you can’t. So your answer is to steal from the rich instead. Got news for you, the rich, including your sugar daddy George Soros, hide their money offshore. Oops, guess we steal from corporations. Nope they just pass the cost on to consumers. So all the tax increases on the rich will be nothing more than a tax hike on the rest of us. Taxing companies passes the cost and worse reduces supply. There is a way though, Publius. In spite of our political differences and the stinging rebukes they produce, we can still have what we want. But we do need to work for it. We need to expand our economic pie, make more wealth, real wealth not speculation and exchange rate differences. Real wealth comes from real natural resources like coal, oil, timber, metal ores, etc…, along with the ability to turn those resources into real products that we can use like fuel, shelter and clothing and lastly stuff we grow from the ground like food and fiber. Get the picture? You may be a wonderful doctor, lawyer, teacher or accountant and your services may be valuable to us all, but like all services they don’t make wealth they consume it. As dirty and filthy as heavy industry, oil drilling or farming may be they add wealth. These industrial sectors enrich us at the bottom line. Services are nice but they don’t pay the bills.
So ultimately, by making our own stuff, growing our own stuff and extracting our own stuff will help bring our trade balance back to a net surplus and make enough revenue that we can afford better healthcare. That’s what your socialist friends in Europe have discovered. Time for us to do the same.
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