The Long View

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Here is the health-care reform agenda of Republican politicians and the right-wingnuts (pundits and conspiracy theorist deadenders) who constitute the aptly-named Republican “base”:

Defeat Obama.

That’s it. It’s just that simple.

No innovative health policy. No creative health proposal. Just a political calculation: Defeat Obama on this big one, and he becomes a lame duck. Then try to make political hay in the 2010 midterm elections.

The Republicans and their right-wingnuts are not interested in your health. The Republicans and their right-wingnuts are not interested in you if you are one of the 45 million Americans who are uninsured. The Republicans and their right-wingnuts are not interested in you if you are a physician or advanced practice nurse struggling to provide care to patients. The Republicans and their right-wingnuts are not interested in you if you are a business, corporation or industry struggling with health insurance benefit costs.

Republinuts just want to defeat Obama . . . by any means necessary.

Too Fast, Too Soon!

Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican Minority Leader of the Senate and master of anal retention, intones that there is no need for haste. Foot dragging Republicans have been hard at work on this issue for sixty years, since President Harry S. Truman called on the Democratic Party to lead the cause for public health care. I was present in the Senate chamber on the night in 1960 when Republican vice president Richard M. Nixon, president of the Senate, cast the tie breaking vote to send an early Medicare bill to defeat. (After the vote I nearly got knocked over by Lyndon Baines Johnson, Democratic Senate majority leader, as he charged down a Senate hallway, livid that he was unable to secure the votes for passage.) The time is now.

I Don’t Want to Lose What I Have!

Right-wingnuts operate in a zero-sum world. Extending rights to others somehow, in their strange political economy, entails taking away rights from themselves. Thus, for example, acknowledging the equality of gay people and relationships somehow undermines straights’ rights. And now health care reform: If we provide healthcare for the uninsured, then we’ll lose what we have. Let me explain this simply: By doing nothing you will lose what you have. In fact, unless you are the rare employee with outstanding health insurance, like a member of Congress, today you have already lost what you had ten or twenty years ago.

Government Rationing!

Republinuts’ fear mongering also includes the threat that health care reform will entail “rationing of health resources.” Let me explain this simply: Health care is already rationed. Your access to health care is rationed by your insurance company, if you’re insured. Your access to health care is rationed by your ability to pay out of pocket. Your access to health care is rationed if you are a member of the armed services or access health care through the VA, Medicare, or Medicaid. Unless you are a wealthy or are a member of Congress, your health care is already rationed.

Socialist Medicine!

When Republinuts start huffing and puffing about “socialized medicine” in those socialist countries like France, England, Holland, or Canada, you know that the debate is about politics, not about health care. Employing the tyranny of the anecdote, Republinuts will relate some horror story about a sick Canadian who died because of unconscionable delays in treatment. Ironically, the future of American global capitalism depends on national health care reform as American corporations are less able to compete with global companies in the industrialized world where most countries ensure that employers are not saddled with providing health benefits. Let’s look at the numbers. Last year the Gallop organization surveyed citizens in several countries asking if they had confidence in their health care or medical systems.

73% of Canadians answered in the affirmative.

73% of Brits answered in the affirmative.

Despite the fact that Americans spend much more per person on health care than the Brits or Canadians, only 56% of Americans answered in the affirmative.

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