POLITICS OCTOBER 6, 2009
-
Read Later
READ LATERAvailable only to subscribers. SUBSCRIBE TODAY
-
Listen
ARTICLE AUDIO
- Font Size
On the first day of the Senate Finance Committee's hearings on health care reform, Senator Jon Kyl, a fiery free-market fundamentalist, assailed reform as a "stunning assault on liberty." By day two, he had turned to the more prosaic task of reversing the bill's cuts in the Medicare budget. The elderly, Kyl fretted, "have reason to be worried that portions of this bill could affect their care." Note that neither health care experts nor even the AARP believes the cuts would hurt senior citizens. But Kyl and the Republicans have managed to outflank even the most hard-core pension-rights lobbyists.
One could muster ideological extremism to make the case that the government has no business subsidizing health insurance for people who can't get it. Alternatively, one could make the equally nutty case that Medicare should not lose a single dollar from its budget, however wasteful and inefficient it may be. But no political philosophy on earth could justify both of these fanatical positions at once. Somehow, though, the Republican Party has managed to stake out this absurd territory--Claude Pepper minus the social conscience, Milton Friedman without the small government.
Its total lack of intellectual merit aside, this odd philosophical hybrid offers the GOP maximum demagogic potential. Republicans first began to gain traction on health care during the August recess, when a series of wild rumors (death panels, for one) devoured the agenda. More recently, they have seized upon the specific fears of Medicare recipients that universal health care will come at their expense. The result is a politically potent cocktail of status quo bias, ignorance, and general apprehension.
David Frum, the Bush speechwriter turned conservative apostate, has warned that the GOP's scorched-earth tactics will ultimately make any conservative health care reform impossible. "If we win, we'll trumpet the success as a great triumph for liberty and individualism," he admitted. "Really though it will be a triumph for inertia."
Of course, there's not much fun in conceding that your side is winning over public opinion by exploiting ignorance and fear. It's far more pleasant to imagine that the people have risen up in principled revulsion against statism.
The vanguard of this fantasy movement rests at The Weekly Standard. One issue from a few weeks ago featured a cover image glorifying the town-hall protestors. Modeled after Norman Rockwell's famous Freedom of Speech painting, it depicted a heroic conservative with a copy of the Standard in his pocket. Unlike Rockwell's image, which portrayed the onlookers as fellow citizens holding their tongues in respectful disagreement, the Standard cover depicted them as hideous goons armed with brass knuckles. The corresponding editorial, unironically entitled "People Power," explained that the public had righteously stood up against elites in the name of "freedom and responsibility." The editors of Pravda would have called this package over-the-top.
Notably absent was any close analysis of the nature of opposition to health care reform, which turns out, upon inspection, not to consist of a glorious pro-capitalist proletarian uprising. The segment of the population most opposed to reform has been the elderly, who benefit from a single-payer system in Medicare. As ABC News polling director Gary Langer explains, "Among seniors, the single strongest independent predictor of opposition to reform overall, and to a public option in particular, is the sense it'll weaken Medicare." The "freedom" here is the freedom to avoid any hint of disturbance in one's government-run health care plan.
There is also the related inconvenience that opposition to health care reform appears to be closely linked to misunderstandings of health care reform. Support for reform rises when poll respondents are read details of Obama's actual plan. And the low point for reform came during August, when public belief in death panels and other misconceptions surged.
Conservatives have reacted to this awkward fact by redoubling the anti-intellectual populism championed (and embodied) by Sarah Palin. One favored technique is to imply that anything believed by a majority of the public--or even a significant minority--must be true. Palin herself defended the fear-mongering over death panels thusly: "Establishment voices dismissed that phrase, but it rang true for many Americans." Well, that settles it.
Wall Street Journal editorial page economics writer Stephen Moore recently cited a poll showing that the average American thinks half of every government dollar is wasted. This result, he gloated, shows why "Americans are so fearful of a government takeover of the health-care system." Of course, no serious estimate would support the idea that anything close to half the budget goes to waste, and Moore makes no attempt to defend it. The notion of a "government takeover" of health care is likewise fictitious.
Taken literally, Moore's observation is true: The fact that Americans believe one absurd fiction does show that they're liable to fall for another. Naturally, however, Moore inferred something else. The new right-wing populism deems the existence of a widespread belief to be sufficient proof of its veracity.
In yet another populist Standard editorial, Fred Barnes mocked Obama's claim that health care reform could reduce cost growth while providing universal coverage. The people have rejected this contention because it violates "the laws of addition and subtraction," he huffed, adding, "Does he think we're stupid?"
I don't mean to go all intellectual elite here, but the concept of expanded coverage and slower cost growth does not, in fact, violate the laws of addition and subtraction. Every other advanced country provides universal coverage, with equivalent or often better performance, at dramatically less cost. Earlier this year, a respected study by the Brookings Institution outlined proposals to expand coverage while reducing cost growth. One of the co-authors of that study, Mark McClellan, who served in the Bush administration, has praised a draft of a Senate Finance Committee bill for fulfilling the report's goals.
The short answer to your question, Mr. Barnes, is yes.
Jonathan Chait is a senior editor at The New Republic.
8 comments
What is particularly exasperating in today's political climate [for true blue progressives] is how reactionaries like Kyl are free to embrace "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice" on their side of the healthcare debate while genuine liberals are not allowed to venture anywhere near "extremism" for their side. Thus there is nothing too extreme the BeckWorld rabble [and the conservatives in Congress who take advantage of it] haven't embraced over and again; while going anywhere near, say, universal healthcare or government funding for abortion is the kiss of death for "the left". Debate THAT? Ha! Ha! Ha! And, yes, the mainstream media [with their corporate advertisers footing the bills] widely play right along with this double standard. And we wonder why the reactionares are able to accummulate so many more dittoheads. Thus we can talk freely about cleaving the "fat" from medicare and medicaid....but the defense department budget, never?! Same with the "welfare" argument. Welfare is taking hard earned dollars from the middle class and shifting it to the shiftless poor instead. To Them. It's almost never about government polices that bloat the bottom line of those who own and operate the agriculture or healthcare industry. Or the trillions upon trillions of dollars sent to Wall Street to prop up the finance industry. Where's Kyl and his ideological commitment to the market economy then? Didn't they all fold in Congress once it was carefully explained to them how the markets had crippled the entire global economy? Instead, we're supposed to argue only about the merits of a healthcare policy that is as far removed from "socialism" as we can possibly steer it. Chait obviously espouses bits and pieces of this himself above. But he still sees the "conflict" as one between Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives. As though Kyl, Baucus and all the other Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee who crushed the "public option" were from two different planets in their approach to healthcare "reform". And Wall Street. So, Chait needs to ask himself this: Is not this ludicrous dichotomy about "Republicans versus Democrats" in the healthcare debate not just one more example of an "absurd fiction" the public believes about our government? And what role does he play in perpetuating it? george walton
- iambiguous
October 6, 2009 at 1:52am
The Republicans did a smart thing here. Smart, but very cynical. They linked the health insurance reform idea to potential cuts and premium increases in the Medicare Advantage program. Now, anyone who has sufficient knowledge of either issue, knows that Medicare Advantage is that part of the program that is run entirely by private companies and was created originally to handle Bush's prescription drug add-ons (Medicare Part B). Advantage extends additional benefits to subscribers and lowers their co-pays in some cases. Very smart politics. So now, since Advantage has its tentacles firmly around the throat of the Medicare program, any perceived cuts to the private part of the program can be demagogued as "cuts" to Medicare. The problem is that many of these benefits really are over and above what is necessary to operate the Medicare program itself. The private sector can now raise rates or lower benefits at will while claiming that Congress is cutting the program if it doesn't go along with the increases.
- desertdog
October 6, 2009 at 10:33am
Watching the Ken Burns PBS series on the national parks last week got me wondering. If the parks didn't exist and Obama were to propose creating a few, would today's Republicans not accuse him of "park socialism?"
- cforeman
October 6, 2009 at 2:20pm
Obama's "park socialism" would include "socialist mountains." I'm not a fan of the late Irving Kristol, however, he did encourage Republicans to "give comprehensive thought to the question of what a conservative welfare state would look like" since, to be realistic, "the idea of a welfare state is in itself perfectly consistent with a conservative political philosophy... In our urbanized, industrialized, highly mobile society, people need government action of some kind if they are to cope with many of their problems: old age, illness, unemployment, etc. They need such assistance; they demand it; they will get it." Credit to Sam Tanenhaus's new book, "The Death of Conservatism," page 96, for this quote. Question: Is William Kristol of the "populist" Standard rebelling against his father?
- LawrenceGulotta
October 6, 2009 at 2:49pm
The Democrats are also engaging in demagoguery. That is the function of political parties, unfortunately. But to look at a common sense alternative that real conservatives might actually back, see the attached. I would appreciate feedback. http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/Small-bill%20proposal%20TWS%283%29.pdf
- r.ennis
October 6, 2009 at 3:11pm
r.ennis. I followed the link and the alternative is not one of common sense since it does nothing to reduces the cost of health insurance. It will also only marginally reduce the cost of health care insurance. The problem with the right wing is that the propose solutions such as this with NO corroborating evidence and NO numbers. 1. This is only a tax cut and like all GOP proposals grants the largest subsidy to those that need it the least. How does it control costs and make health coverage affordable? 2. I am waiting for someone to explain how insurance based in Wyoming can reduce health care costs in Maryland, except by severly limiting what is covered. Now maybe I am wrong and the residents of Wyoming would line up to subsidize Maryland health care, or Maryland residents would travel to Wyoming for their health care. 3. How does extending COBRA address the uninsured or the affordability of premiums? Ah we can pay for it with the 5% tax bracket deduction due to our reduced income. Of course if there is a job loss from a company that does not provide any health insurance, then COBRA does not help. 4. Yes and determined by what and verified by whom? Let's just create a two tiered system: One with low premiums for those who are healthy and one with high premiums for everyone else. After all some people are genetically healthier regardless of life style: Should they be exempt from premiums? Maybe we can do it like auto insurance: If I don't file a claim for three years, then I get a healthy citizen discount. if I do file a claim, then I pay a premium for five years. 5. Runaway malpractice law suits is a GOP fantasy. The only sure way to reduce malpractice costs is to reduce malpractice, not deny that it exists. However, awarding no awards to plaintiffs for malpractice will not appreciably slow health care inflation. 6. Finally: A tax payer subsidy that will disappear after a few years because the newly covered cronically ill will stop using the emergency room and consume no other resources! If this works for the cronically ill, why not apply it to everyone and in no time the cost of health care will disappear. Let's face facts: The free market has given the U.S. the most expensive and inefficient health care in the world. More of the same is not the answer.
- tpinter
October 6, 2009 at 9:57pm
Thank you for your comments, tpinter. I will not respond point by point, although I take issue with much that you say. However I would like to make two points. 1. How does adding another trillion or so make the system less expensive and more efficient? 2. Why not try out a 15 billion plan to see how far it takes you before spending a trillion?
- r.ennis
October 7, 2009 at 9:54am
It's sad to see TRB descend to this kind of tribal name-calling. Opponents are nutty, fanatical, absurd, totally lack intellectual merit, biased, ignorant, apprehensive, fear-mongoring, gloating, fictitious, and too over-the-top for Pravda. Worse, the piece is virtually devoid of insights or useful information. Yes, the evil-doers do evil, but why should I pay you to tell me that? At the very least you could do it weekly, but no, you want $100 a year to do it every other week. The Standard does it every week, and its covers are better, too.
- jcorso
October 13, 2009 at 1:15pm