Truth Doesn’t Matter Much to Nihilists
November 22, 2009
From John McCain:
“I remain committed to opposing any bill that puts your health care decisions in the hands of government bureaucrats while adding more than a trillion dollars to our country’s deficit. Taxpayers simply cannot afford this government takeover of our health care system and this is our opportunity to put an end to it.”
To which Ezra Klein asks the obvious:
“That’s interesting, I guess, but what about the bill being considered by the Senate, which cuts $130 billion from our country’s deficit and leaves health-care decisions exactly where they are now, wherever that might be?”
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Wow. I wasn’t aware Klein was that much of a nihilist.
It is quite like asking since when does Republicans not want to cut Medicare?
The Republican Medicare bill from 2003 reads thus:
“The covered services are: evaluating the beneficiary’s need for pain and symptom management, including the individual’s need for hospice care; counseling the beneficiary with respect to end-of-life issues and care options, and advising the beneficiary regarding advanced care planning.”
This is a provision for end-of-life counseling. It has remarkable language affinities with the Democratic proposals. This allows people to do advanced care planning if they are terminally ills, whereas the Democrats extend the language to include anyone who opts to. I’ve seen people including the National Right to Life go bonkers over the so-called “death panels” language and the cuts to Medicare that’s going to “kill seniors” and when the Republicans tried to cut Medicare or when they have end-of-life provisions that is very similar in language to that of the Democrats, we’re left to assume their complaints got lost in translation.
So, no, the truth really doesn’t matter. If anything, I hope the Democrats use this against Republicans in any future attempt to cut from Medicare.
McCain is equalled by Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). Be their advice good or bad, the members of the Task Force on Preventive Services were not “bureaucrats making health care decisions” as she falsely claimed, but medical professional appointed by President Bush.
The Republicans are fighting for one thing and one thing alone in this fight: private profit for their political base.
How else to explain the situation, when evidence from many countries around the world shows that what Republicans call “government-run health care” works pretty darn well on all the counts that matter–cost, health results, and even customer satisfaction?
David’s point is right. Single-payer systems tend to delver quality care as least as good as in the US, while leaving nobody behind, and doing so for far less money. That’s really not easy to understand – you save money by broadening the risk pool, reducing the administrative burden of multiple insurers, bargaining with providers and drug companies, and reducing the overhead spent by private insurers for profit and weeding out people. Unfortunately, this is a non-starter, as ideology trumps prudence.