Health Care Reform Cannot be Hostage to "Socialized Medicine" Fear Mongering

How can Tea Bag Protesters be Brought to the Health Care Reform Movement?

A favorite pastime of the American right-wing is talking trash about the federal government. This near fanatical belief in the need to reduce the size and power of government leads directly to calls to let the free market reign and to slash taxes - recently on display at the many so-called "tea bag" protests earlier this year. With this ideologically-predetermined proscription for all of society's problems, it is now near impossible to engage with conservatives in Congress on economic stimulus, infrastructure investments, reducing carbon emissions, and health care reform.

Whether a Republican talking head, a far-right AM radio talk show host, or just a Archie Bunker style armchair pundit, conservatives in this country relish any opportunity to bash government. They take it as gospel that government is inherently inefficient, ineffective, and just too darn big. This faith in the intrinsic shortcomings of the state leads inexorably to the conclusion that there should be fewer regulations and lower taxes. For conservatives who preach the no new tax gospel according to Grover Norquist - who famously said that his goal was not to abolish government, but to "reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub" - government is always the problem.

This near religious belief in the shortcomings of government is one reason why the Soviet Union was such a useful punching bag during the Cold War years. In the USSR, the state - under the complete control of the Communist Party - ran everything. From collective farms to television programming, from vacuum cleaner production to the music business, every last bit of economic activity was centrally planned from Moscow.

A GOSPLAN poster from the 1920's Proclaiming that the USSR's centrally planned economy would "catch up to and overtake" the capitalist world

And not surprisingly, the Soviet state did a poor job of meeting consumer demand, was rife with inefficiencies, and created opportunities for corruption on a grand scale. But to conclude that the Soviet experience is proof that the state - as a general matter - cannot be trusted to do anything is a non sequitur. AIG nearly collapsed - but it does not follow from that example that all insurance companies are doomed to gamble away their assets on risky derivative contracts. And more importantly, the Soviet Union did a very decent job of providing health care to the entire population - at a fraction of what we spend.

It is not hard to prove that publicly run health care systems in other developed countries deliver better outcomes for more people at lower costs than the quasi-market system here in the United States. But for Limbaugh conservatives, this kind of evidence-based, common sense approach does not compute.

Now, armed with poll-tested talking points from Frank Luntz (the Cro-Magnon man who gave us such Orwellian gems as the "death tax" and the pro-pollution "Clear Skies Act") - conservatives in Congress and in the health-industrial-complex are out to once again torpedo health care reform. We have seen this movie before.

Ronald Reagan was a spokesperson in the 1961 fight against universal health care - this LP trashing universal health care was distributed by the American Medical Association
(you can listen here).

The right - with strong assists from segments of the health care industry - has long derailed reform. Our costly system of health care delivery lines too many pockets for reform to not meet with organized resistance. The debate has been skewed to the point where the modest, relatively conservative plan offered by President Obama is demagogogued as "socialized medicine." As the fight heats up, expect Fox News and other reliable conservative mouthpieces to scare Americans about the government getting between them and their doctor. As if private health insurance companies do not now come between patients and physicians.

Can a popular president - with a rag-tag collection of progressive allies - counter the right wing talking machine this go round? Surely the Republican sponsored alternative - which is explicitly based on the premise that the market is always best - is vulnerable in this era of unprecedented free market failures? As a presidential candidate, Senator McCain went so far as to promote the idea that health care reform should be modeled on Congress's deregulation of the banking and financial sectors.

We entrust to our government the responsibility of managing a nuclear arsenal, engaging in armed combat, enforcing criminal laws, administering capital punishment, and handling countless other matters of life and death. Otherwise jingoistic conservatives do not, as a general matter, accept the notion that the government could be entrusted to regulate health care in such a way as to make affordable and accessible to everyone. Is there a way to tap into this patriotic streak of the conservative movement with an "Americans kick ass so we can sure as hell tackle the problems of health care" attitude?

Whether conservatives can be brought along or not - the time is now for health care reform. Reform was derailed under Truman in the 1940's, under LBJ in the 1960's, under Nixon in the early 1970's, and recently under Clinton in the early 1990's. Let's not look back on 2009 as yet another lost opportunity. If Congress does not hear calls from their constituents clamoring for universal health care, however, President Obama will not be able to deliver. We cannot let the right-wing kill health care with cold-war scare tactics, misleading talking points, and misinformation.