Mighty Konfused
I'm shocked at the usually sensible Mickey Kaus's "best argument" as to why Dems should vote for health care. It reads like an April Fool's joke. After rejecting a correct argument (that admitting error and voting against the bill isn't perfect, but it's better than pulling the trigger after everyone begged you not to shoot) he states:
...passing health care reform offers Dems, in the not-so- long term, a chance to do more than avoid Republican attacks. It offers the chance to disprove them. For months, both GOP and Fox hosts have been talking about socialized medicine and death panels and vicious Medicare cuts and the government coming between you and your doctor, etc. If Democrats pass the bill and none of this happens, Republican opponents will be more than defeated. They'll be discredited. [....] discredited enough to give Dems some running room for a few election cycles. Retreating on health care, on the other hand, gives credence to the Republican claims. Indeed, for all practical purposes it lets them win the argument.
Let's take this one step at a time.
First, the public has been begging Congress not to pass this bill for months, regularly voting out Democrats just to make a point. If the Congress dares pass it, the attitude will be "that tears it" and anger will shoot sky high. I'm not saying there'll be violence in the streets, but everything short. Unless something else major intervenes before then, this anger will still be bubbling up in November.
Furthermore, it'll give the GOP a cause they can rally around for the next few election cycles: THEY DIDN'T LISTEN. Republicans can nationalize campaigns, saying we'll repeal this bill before it can do any damage, but we need to take back the House, the Senate and the Presidency. (Heck, I can imagine Democrats running on a pledge to overturn the law.) But if the bill disappears, so does this political path. All can be forgiven--maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of their lives.
As far as health care reform in operation "disproving" Republican claims, it is to laugh. Nothing can be known for years. I mean the bill won't even really take effect until after this year's election, and the benefits don't even kick in until a few years down the road. This isn't a tax cut or a war that allows you to (fairly or not) take stock in a year or two. It'll be at least four or five years, maybe a decade before we can have any idea if the plan is working.
Until then, if anything bad happens--and bad things are always happening in our health care system--Repubs can blame it on health reform.
To put it in terms that Mickey understands, as long as health care doesn't get better, the Democrats are discredited. We're allegedly in a crisis. Pass a bill and the crisis doesn't go away, the bill fails.
Let's not forget that right now the large majority of Americans have health care they like. If (really when) these people have stories about how the new bureaucracy denied them treatment, or how the switchover caused tremendous dislocation, the Republicans will be able to trumpet them. And if overall costs go up--which Mickey seems to admit will happen--that will be enough to make the Republican case right there.
No, if the Dems vote for this, there'll be trouble. Then only a few things can save them. First, and this is still a good argument, people forget. Other crises will arise, and (though this argument sounded a lot better in 2009) the faster the Dems put health care behind them, the easier it'll be to move on.
Then in the long run, say in ten years, when people are used to their benefits, just try taking them away.
To add insult to injury, Kaus notes:
Of course, some of the ill-effects predicted by health care reform opponents wouldn't show up for many, many years--a slowdown in medical innovation, for example.
This is the one area where the Dems have nothing to fear. It's the best reason to oppose health care reform, but a slowdown of innovation will never "show up." Innovation could grind to a halt. You can't notice what doesn't happen.
PS This video seems to be making the rounds. Yeah, I know it's shooting fish in a barrel, but this compilation of top Democrats threatening an apocalypse if the Senate allows 51 votes to decide things is fascinating:
posted by LAGuy @ 12:12 AM
2 Comments:
"Let's not forget that right now the large majority of Americans have health care they like." This canard is being constantly repeated and getting really old. By and large, while many people prefer the devil they got to the new one that Congress is discussing and worry about losing what they do have, complaints about managed care have been ominpresent and part of the reason there has been a health care debate for all these years (ie if this debate was just about the poor uninsured, nobody would really care). There is concern that any fix will make a bad situation worse, but that is different from saying people are satisfied with health care
I think Anon is mistaken. Most people in poll after poll are satisfied with their own coverage - mainly because most of the cost is superficially born by employers and gov't. They pay for it but not directly.
People are concerned about the idea that there are millions of people out there dying for lack of insurance (even though this claim is vastly overstated). That is the humanitarian streak in the public, and people would like Congress to do something about it. But they don't want to give up their own level of health care service to affect any meaningful change (that's the public's selfish streak).
In fact, I think the Dems are flirting with disaster if they pass the current bill and health care levels diminish in any obvious way. It won't be fair to blame them, but see how the "failure" of the stimulus package is being used against Democrats. No stimulus package was going to cause immediate improvements to the economy, but the Dems set themselves up to be blamed for any worsening of the economy.
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