Pop Fiction
How to demagogue health care and feel good in the morning.
* Jonathan Chait, TNR
* October 6, 2009 | 12:00 am
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.
(More here.)
* Jonathan Chait, TNR
* October 6, 2009 | 12:00 am
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.
(More here.)
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