The progressive case for health care reform has moved on to the discussion of strategy. Reconciliation is the morally correct course, they charge, to defeat "the small-mindedness of the GOP."
The health care debate, with opponents crying socialism about reform that is patterned after classic moderate Republicanism, has exposed the small-mindedness of the GOP. The party’s reconciliation hysteria may not be its worst moment of this episode, but it is its most pathetic. That opponents have had to lean so heavily on a completely trumped-up objection speaks volumes about the overall strength of their case.
But let's look at the cases. Progressives argue that we must lower our health care costs and provide better health care to more people. Republicans and other Americans are skeptical that any of the plans put forward by Democrats will accomplish any of this. And with good reason. The Wall Street Journal explained in an article from last November.
The typical argument for ObamaCare is that it will offer better medical care for everyone and cost less to do it, but occasionally a supporter lets the mask slip and reveals the real political motivation. So let's give credit to John Cassidy, part of the left-wing stable at the New Yorker, who wrote last week on its Web site that "it's important to be clear about what the reform amounts to."
Mr. Cassidy is more honest than the politicians whose dishonesty he supports. "The U.S. government is making a costly and open-ended commitment," he writes. "Let's not pretend that it isn't a big deal, or that it will be self-financing, or that it will work out exactly as planned. It won't. What is really unfolding, I suspect, is the scenario that many conservatives feared. The Obama Administration . . . is creating a new entitlement program, which, once established, will be virtually impossible to rescind."
Why are they doing it? Because, according to Mr. Cassidy, ObamaCare serves the twin goals of "making the United States a more equitable country" and furthering the Democrats' "political calculus." In other words, the purpose is to further redistribute income by putting health care further under government control, and in the process making the middle class more dependent on government. As the party of government, Democrats will benefit over the long run.
The progressive goal, often stated, is a single payer system. Republicans argue that health care suffers under a single payer system, and we're a short hop away from it if Obama's "reforms" are enacted. The public option is an important step toward that goal. When progressives aren't denying that they intend to create a single payer system, they're claiming that single payer systems work just fine.
This morning a London Sunday Times article lays out for us just how well a single payer system works in the real world.
DAMNING reports on the state of the National Health Service, suppressed by the government, reveal how patients’ needs have been neglected.
They diagnose a blind pursuit of political and managerial targets as the root cause of a string of hospital scandals that have cost thousands of lives.
The harsh verdict on the state of the NHS, after a spending splurge under Labour between 2000 and 2008, raises worrying questions about the future quality of the health service as budgets are squeezed.
One report, based on the advice of almost 200 top managers and doctors, says hospitals ignored basic hygiene to cram in patients to meet waiting-time targets.
It says “several interviewees” cited the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells [NHS Trust in Kent where 269 deaths during 2005-6 were caused by infection with Clostridium difficile bacteria].
“Managers crowded in patients in order to meet waiting-time targets and, in the process, lost sight of the fundamental hygiene requirements for infection prevention,” the report stated.
There were subsequent failings at health trusts in Basildon in Essex, and Mid Staffordshire. Filthy wards and nurse shortages led to up to 1,200 deaths at Stafford hospital.
At the New York Times and the Washington Post there isn't much interest in these aspects of health care reform. According to the mainstream press on our side of he water it's all sunshine and blue skies, and it's all about the strategy.
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