Healthcare reform. Cool! Yawn...

By Allen Kolmes

Given my personally being occupied by the health care industry, I have been following the health care reform debate with a lot of interest.

So I feel compelled to weigh in on it. So this will hopefully be the first of several posts on the topic. The resident dittohead wingnut will of course be bloviating (love that word!) on the topic, but that will be purey comic relief.

This being a blog, the first order of business is to demolish the opposition. Which for this particular issue is extraordinarily easy. Easier than any major issue I can remember.

Every significant issue we face has a compelling argument and a compelling counterargument. For instance, the argument against the auto company bailouts (which I was for) is a very strong one, one I was tempted to favor. And that argument was made.

By conrast, what has me absolutely astounded is the complete lack of coherence of the Republican response to the health care issue. I have no doubt that there is a strong and valid counterargument out there, but I have searched for it in vain on the media sources I use--including many hours of listening to right-wing talk radio. The argument against health care reform has been--(I'll provide a choice of adjectives here--weak; fabricated; complete bullshit). What has been completely nonexistent, however, is any description of what the Republicans would have us do instead.

I exaggerate. I can in fact think of two Republican health care policy proposals.

1. Decrease Medicare expenditures first (this was popular among the more coherent protestors at the town hall meeting I recently attended)

I'm all for this. Unfortunately, this will require Death Panels to make it happen.

2. I think McCain was for a $5000-ish tax credit for purchasing health insurance.

And this helps the minimum wage worker with a pre-existing condition how?

3. The current system is great--let's leave it alone! (I'm extrapolating here).

While this appears to be the default Republican policy position, I have yet to hear it defended with anything resembling logic.

Meanwhile, the "why this won't work" arguments would be hysterical if the stakes were not so high. Among the Republican intellectual elite, we have Sarah Palin describing the Death Panels on Facebook. I had hoped that foreign policy was her weakest subject. Obviously, it isn't.

Capturing the Republican intellectual zeitgeist at the grass roots was the woman in South Carolina who told her Republican congressman to"keep your government hands off my Medicare." I really wish that she is a statistical outlier. But I suspect she is not.

God bless that woman. No one in the past few months has helped me more than her to realize--
we're fucked.

A popular line of argument among conservatives, at least the ones I saw at the town hall meeting, is that the proposals being advanced, reasonable or not, are just lies, designed to advance a hidden agenda--you know, like the destruction of freedom or whatever else we America-haters are up to. I can understand the Republican paranoia there--they have had a lot of experience in the use of that tactic for the last 8 years.

And then there are the internal contradictions--the arguments being presented in favor of preserving access to medical procedures of dubious value vs. the emphasis on the importance of cost control.

In favor of preserving access to medical procedures of dubious value--RNC Chairman Michael Steele and Rush Limbaugh.

Steele, in a CNN interview, mused on the prospects of an 85 year-old woman being denied hip surgery. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0907/21/cnr.05.html. BTW, that was one of Steelleto's better moment in that interview.

Rush, in his show, defends the right of a 100-year old woman to get a pacemaker. http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_072809/content/01125112.guest.html

OK, maybe these women are exceptionally fit for their age, and will actually benefit from these procedures. I hope their doctors are wise enough to make that call.

BTW, Rush, Michael--that's taxpayer money going toward those procedures.

On Bill Maher the other night, California Republican Congressman Darrell Issa was actually worth listening to. He pointed admiringly to the French (French!! Gag Me!!) health care system, whose budget takes up 8% of GDP, as opposed to the 17%-and-rising-fast proportion that the US system requires. I think Bill then blew it--he should have grilled Issa as to how we get from 17% to 8%. Because aggressive government intervention is the only way I see that happening. Is that what Mr. Issa is advocating?

So what will it be? Pacemakers for 100-year olds? Or cutting the Medicare budget in half? Because both ain't gonna happen.