July 24, 2009

Crying Wolf Again

Tired threats vs. Needed health reform

National healthcare reform has been kicked around for 60 years, becoming more urgently needed each year it is delayed.  As it escalates, the health insurance crisis continues to cause great suffering, crippling personal costs and a tremendous drain on the national economy.  

Yet, the rightwing chorus is again bombarding this year's efforts to reform health insurance with a time-worn, two-note mantra:

1.  Why the rush?
2.  If government is involved, we're all doomed.

An Indiana congressman managed to wrap both these attacks into one phrase, warning that Obama is "moving as rapidly as possible towards a socialistic form of government."

Nonsense or not, these messages are reverberating in the media and, as intended, scaring people and making Congress nervous.  Yesterday, Senate Democrats delayed a vote on reform.  Crying wolf works.

Every attempt at healthcare reform since Truman's 1949 plan has met the same chorus of dire predictions:  Financial ruin, loss of freedom, deteriorating medicine, and the ultimate evil, socialism.  (Sixty years later, sure enough, a San Diego Union-Tribune cartoon this week used just one word, the s-word, printed on pill bottles held by Nancy Pelosi.)

CPI has compiled a list of lowlights in the long history of crying wolf to protect health industry interests over the public interest.

The creation of Medicare in 1965 was the sole major reform to survive this assault.  A highly popular and efficient system, Medicare has proved the naysayers wrong.  Yet they're throwing the same doomsday darts at Obama's proposed "public option," which would be similar to Medicare but for fewer people and not mandatory.

For many progressives, the public option doesn't go far enough to eliminate the huge marketing, billing, claim-denying and lobbying costs of private insurance.

In this brief video, Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-NY, argues forcefully that "government-sponsored" health insurance, like Medicare, will be much cheaper and better for patients than the current "private option" so desperately defended by industry interests.

But opponents have latched onto "government takeover" as their attack strategy no matter what the facts.  Their numbers come from a consulting firm now owned by a major insurance company.  The US Chamber of Commerce is pouring millions of dollars into a new campaign to protect insurers from change.  The attacks have reached the bizarre point of Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele warning that Obama's reform would come "between the patient and his insurance company."

A more levelheaded assessment comes from the Economic Policy Institute, with research showing why health reform would not be as expensive as is often stated, and why a tax on the wealthy would actually impose a very light burden.

The cost of delaying reform is much higher, as Dr. Bob Ross, California Endowment president and former San Diego County health director, said this week at a San Diegans for Healthcare Coverage forum.  

Obama voiced the same reality check Wednesday:

"If somebody told you there is a plan that is guaranteed to double your healthcare costs over the next 10 years, that's guaranteed to result in more Americans losing their healthcare, and that is by far the biggest contributor to our federal deficit -- I think most people would be opposed to that," Obama said.

"Well, that's the status quo."

Don't sit still for this.

If you like Obama's plan, declare your support here.

Click here to read Rep. Weiner on private insurance, and watch the video.  Click here to support a single-payer, or Medicare for all, bill championed by Weiner and Reps. Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers.

Call and e-mail your Senator and Representatives today.  Make sure they hear your voice above the Cry Wolf Chorus!