Anybody who remembers the 1994 health care "debate" will recognize what's going on now. The counter-reformation against health care reform has begun and seems to have been launched in full swing.
In 1994, the opponents of reform threw up every possible argument, and then went and made up some more. The health insurance business ran 100 million dollars worth of ads. The "mud" of obfuscation was so thick, nobody knew what to think.
"Oh, the cost," say the critics, just as they did in 1994. The cost is about $1 trillion--over ten years. That's $100 billion a year. Compare to the cost of the Iraq War, which will wind up being about $3 trillion, which most of the people who now argue against health care reform thought was just fine.
"You won't be able to keep your insurance," they say, because the government's requirements for coverage will be so strict that your present insurance either won't qualify or because you'll lose your insurance some day and have to get government insurance. None of this is in any known health care reform proposal.
"Slow down, you move too fast," they say now, just as they did then. National health care was first proposed by Pres. Harry Truman over 60 years ago. "There's too much there--1000 pages. Who has time to read it?" So-called "Hillarycare" was 1200 pages, and they said the same thing about it. I imagine the members of Congress will do at least as good a job of reading it as they did the Patriot Act.
"Gadzooks! The government?" they say. Government can never do anything right, some say, unless we're planning on a war, in which case the same people will argue that government can never do wrong.
"Do you really want the government to control one-sixth of the US economy?" they say. Back in 1994, health care was one-seventh of the US economy. Now, it's one-sixth. There's a lesson, right there, in the escalating costs of health care.
In the last 70 years, the United States of America, one way or another, has spent a ton of money on Social Security, Medicare, and Defense. What did we get? The elderly, once the poorest age group, is now the wealthiest, and the healthiest it has ever been, while the American military is dominant around the globe.
According to the World Health Organization, France, which has universal coverage, has the world's best health care system. The United States is 37th, right behind Costa Rica. We do, however, lead the world in one category: We're number one in cost. We spend twice as much per capita as Canada, Britain, Germany, or France--and they live longer.
The only consolation in all this is that the Obama people who snarked at "Hillarycare" along with the Republicans and blamed her for the debacle in the nineties are now beginning to realize it's tougher than it looks and sweet talk from The Chosen isn't going to be enough for the forces arrayed against reform.
Which is not to say I don't wish him the best and hope that he gets a decent bill through, for us as well as him. The same thing almost happened with the stimulus bill and it got through. We'll see.
I sure wish we had LBJ right now, though. He'd teach the Blue Dogs to heel.
Posted by: Hypatia | July 22, 2009 at 04:59 PM
Yes, we'll see. He's purposely trying to avoid what a lot of people see as Clinton's big mistake, which is sending a detailed plan to Congress. Obama may be overcompensating the other way.
Nothing against Obama, but Hillary's grit on this issue--and her willingness to be partisan and fight like hell--is a major reason I supported her.
Posted by: John Petty | July 23, 2009 at 11:30 PM