12.01.07
Why the Right hates national healthcare
In a nutshell: because it will work, and the American public will say, “How long has this been going on? Why didn’t we have this 40 years ago?” Krugman:
“The Grim Truth” — That’s the title of an article in National Review. What they mean, of course, is the grim possibility of a Democratic sweep next year. (Hat tip to Daily Kos.)
NR warns its readers that
It’s almost impossible to exaggerate the Democratic advantage on domestic issues: If it’s an issue, they lead.
And their greatest fear is that if the Democrats do win,
It would probably also mean a national health-insurance program that would irrevocably expand government involvement in the economy and American life, and itself make voters less likely to turn toward conservatism in the future.
I think that sentence contains a grim truth for progressives: the right will fight any health reform tooth and nail. They believe — and so do I — that the implications of universal coverage would extend far beyond health care, that it would revitalize the New Deal idea. And so they’ll do anything to stop it.
Raymond McInnis said,
1 December 2007 at 10:01 am
Mike, you’re onto something with this topic. I have written about the topic frequently on blogleft, so have done a little research.
annually big pharm spends over $1 mil per congressman, lobbying.
BP pays billy tauzin over one mil annually to lobby. before his job with BP, tauzin headed the cong committee that dealt with pharmaceutical leg.
Harvard prof, Marcia Angell, has written a devastating critique of how big pharm works the patent laws.
However, here is something that goes along with your piece. In 1992, during the national health legislation fiasco, shepherded by hillary, william kristol, neocon editor of the murdoch-financed weekly standard — for the reasons that you give above — worked particularly hard to prevent the legislation from passing, because he knew that if it passed, the lock that the rightwing holds on stopping progressive legislation would be greatly weakened.
i heard this claim uttered by one of mark shields opponents — not david brooks — several weeks ago on jim lehrer newshour.
it is interesting, however, that the terms of demonization, especially “socialized medicine”, used by the right to strike fear in the heads of uninformed americans, don’t have the same cachet is in former eras.
healthcare’s time has come!
listen, how come you haven’t responded to my critique of phone polling, posted yesterday?
and that google reader option you mentioned doesn’t work. I tried it — have a google reader account, but you can’t post on it.
LeisureGuy said,
1 December 2007 at 10:13 am
The Google Reader answer was in response to your question about how to find the blog and the new posts: you can subscribe via Google Reader: http://leisureguy.wordpress.com. Then you will see all posts.
I totally agree with you that the phrase “socialized medicine” no long strikes fear into the heart of the American public. When it worked, it was because of the Communist Menace and the implication that “socialized medicine” would be the beginning of an irrevocable slide into Communism. That’s over now—plus people are becoming aware that government employees—and in particular Federal government employees, including those in Congress—are already enjoying the benefits of socialized medicine.
I don’t necessarily respond to all comments, but with respect to possible polling error due to sample bias: I’m sure that polling professionals are acutely aware of this and go to great lengths to avoid such an obvious problem. Polling is, after all, their profession, and professionals (generally speaking) know what they’re doing. Asking a polling professional, “Did you ever think about possible sample bias?” is like asking a surgeon, “Did you know you have to be careful about cleanliness or risk infection?” You’ll notice that most polls these days include the margin of error (slightly misleading, as this comment indicates).
Raymond McInnis said,
1 December 2007 at 11:26 am
Mike, can’t find it right now, but i did see something go past about two weeks ago, on polling errors, caused by the same things that i mentioned.
i thought that i saved it, but guess not.
unlike you, i don’t think that polling is that reliable.
mark shields, i know, as one skeptic about the reliability of polling, made this claim on jim lehrer several weeks ago, in connection with his argument that the polls in iowa DO NOT register young people — because their cell phones are not in the database used by polling people.
we’ll see about this soon, when the iowa caucus data is disclosed.
i also think that the call identification function on phones helps skew polling, because people can opt out so easily, something that i have done myself.
Americaneocon said,
2 December 2007 at 7:47 am
There’s no democratic advantage, unless you’re looking for Stalinist medical treatment. See “The Democrats and Universal Health Care“. The National Interest piece hits the nail on the head!
LeisureGuy said,
2 December 2007 at 8:32 am
I read the post at the link. Good summary of the various Democratic alternatives. None, in my opinion, go quite far enough: I’m for a single-payer system, and I think that we can look for models among the countries that currently have a national healthcare system. No reason to look at Stalinist Russia—in fact, I’m astonished that you would recommend that model. I think that particular approach would be abhorrent to you. Rather, I would look at the modern industrial world, all of which currently have some form of national healthcare, and learn from their experience, building on the best from those systems (Canada, England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, …. well, the rest of the industrialized world).
Here are a couple of links for you: A brief discussion of Wisconsin, and a NY Times editorial that references several interesting studies.