Health Care Debate—At Last
A new Associated Press-GfK poll that shows Americans evenly divided on the Obamacare repeal is getting big play as the House opens debate on precisely that course of action.
Won't it be amazing to hear Democrats argue—in view of this spectacular turn in public opinion—that House Republicans should now back off?
Nope. To Obamacare's proponents, opinion polls are irrelevant, except when the results tally with what they, the proponents, want to do. When results don't match expectations, too bad. Shut up!
Polls last year showing plurality support for stopping Obamacare in its tracks were understood, by the pro-Obamacare community, to reflect public confusion over the blessings that Congress was poised to bestow on us through partial nationalization of health care.
We just didn't understand, bless our hearts. The likes of Mrs. Palin and Glenn Beck had led us down the garden path. It was necessary that Congress pats us kindly on the national noggin and gives us what the polls showed, which most didn't want.
To be sure, repeal isn't going to happen this year—no matter the size of the House majority in favor of it, or such arguments as Republicans bring concerning the unaffordability of the whole enterprise. The exercise of debating and voting on repeal will have wonderful effects notwithstanding.
Last time around, debate hardly took place. Mrs. Pelosi was firmly in charge on the House side. Passage was a done deal. Cost and constitutional aspects got no airing apart from what the spunkier breed of Republican could manage on non-congressional turf.
At last, thanks to the November election, prospects exist for meticulous exposure of the bill's defects and delusions, among them the interesting theory that it's cheaper to put 30 million new people on government insurance than not to do so. Democrats should expect that such claims as they make without factual or logical substantiation will meet with informed, intelligent pushback.
It wouldn't be surprising to find proponents of repeal, at the grassroots level, downshifting a bit. We all know life is dynamic. A time-honored property of the human race is to take, however reluctantly, what life brings irrevocably, learning somehow to live with it.
When it comes to Obamacare, the necessity laid upon Republicans—one they have embraced—is to say, and say again, look, this thing isn't going to work the way they told you it would. It's going to cost more than we were led, intentionally, to believe. It's going to narrow the medical choices we make, and there's a good chance it violates the U.S. Constitution.
Such are the points Republicans indeed will make. Democrats, by the same token, will come back and say, hold on, that's not right and here's why. When they do, they had better have their facts and figures straight if they mean to engage in robust and nourishing floor debate with the likes of congressmen Paul Ryan from Wisconsin and Mike Pence from Indiana, who know at least as much about Obamacare as its watchful guardians on the Democratic policy side claim to know.
Nor will Speaker John Boehner essay to gavel down Ryan, Pence and their allies. He will insist they be heard—not to the exclusion of competing viewpoints, but rather to the end that we finally figure out the implications of this law that Mrs. Pelosi was so eager that we should embrace on the purity of her testimony and that of like-minded others.
No, repeal isn't going to happen this year. Something transcendently marvelous might happen instead—the infusion of understanding into this complex and vexing debate. And not only that. In consequence of such understanding, we might sense some way of finally solving the health care problem—which Republicans as well as Democrats acknowledge to be a problem—through better, cheaper, broader use of freedom-preserving marketplace measures.
Last year, the Obamacare Democrats told America to shut up and do as we say. Now they have to explain why and how. It's going to be fun listening in.
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The funny thing is, didnt it take Republican votes to get Obamacare passed in the first place? I think its naive of people to blame the whole mess solely on the Democrats and welcome the new Republicans in as saviors of the House.
I overheard a very strong Barak Obama supporter the other day complaining about the Republicans and how their first order of business was going to be trying to repeal Obamacare even though there are bigger fish to fry. He then asked, "How is repealing Obamacare going to be good for the economy?"
Gee...I wonder.
By the way, Im not saying that Mr. Murchison is hailing the Republicans as saviors. I believe it will be interesting hearing how the Democrats try and explain themselves, albeit annoying.
Mr. Randazzo,
Yes, if one cannot cry about GOP/DEM Duopoly at least he should laugh. Here is a really good laugh about Karl Rove the cost cutter
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/11/entitlement_cuts
"Didn't it take Republican votes to get Obamacare passed in the first place?"
I am not a fan of the Republicans or of Boehner, but the answer to this question is easy: no. None voted for in the Senate; none* voted for in the House.
* On final passage - on an earlier vote it did receive a solitary GOP vote (from a since-defeated Vietnamese-American Republican from a majority-black district in New Orleans).
Mr. Kabala,
But shouldn't we give credit where credit is due for the republicans: "the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) passed in 1997 by the Republican-controlled Congress, and George Bush’s massive 2003 Medicare prescription drug program. Or, in the case of Mitt Romney, ObamaCare Lite, which he signed while Governor of Massachusetts.
The thing to remember is who does it really benefit? If the answer is it benefits the growth of government, then the dems will support it. If it benefits that small private body who control the greatest percentage of America's wealth, then the Republicans will support it. If it lowers costs or makes health care more affordable for the ordinary citizen who needs it most, both sides must "support it" but can never be caught dead voting for it.
The insurance business loves mandatory premiums, so long as they have discretion in providing the covered services while Government loves providing mandatory services so long as "others" must pay for them. Once health care and medicine become a profitable big time business to save others, instead of a duty in charity to save ones self --- the end is always lurking just around the corner.
Except that Big Business does not care whether others are saved, well said, Robert.
Why should there be a debate? Just because the legislature is more divided?
"Explain ourselves? No, sorry, we do not have to explain why we gave the insurance industry every guaranteed benefit possible in order to integrate them into the government and thus into our hands, thank you very much."
I bet the partisan groups can already have a good argument. "You oppose us having complete power over an industry and getting a piece of a big pie? We didn't oppose you getting complete power from an entire military-industrial complex during a War on Terror, so git!"
@Randazzo: I am more interested in hearing Republicans try to justify any sort of critique against excess expense--or how blocking this one move can possibly, in light of our ridiculous foreign engagement bills, defer a sovereign default by more than a brief stretch.
(On second thought, I'm not at all interested in hearing what any of them think. As Madonna Ciccone said to Jonathan Pryce, "It doesn't matter what those morons say!" So, what's playing at the cinema?)
@NGPM....I gave up reading anything about politics for Lent last year and at the end of 40 days was a happier man for having done so.
…".I gave up reading anything about politics for Lent last year and at the end of 40 days was a happier man for having done so."
I shows in your comment about how Republicans helped to pass Obama Care.
Can anyone tell me what the preceding post means? I suppose the "I" is a mistake for "it", but what can a phrase like "shows in your comment about how" possibly mean? And what is the relevance for a non-Republican who does not even live in the US? As they say in Italian comic books, "AIUT'!"
And what is the relevance for a non-Republican who does not even live in the US?
I follow U.S. economic news for two purposes: firstly, to convince my American-resident parents to switch currencies so that our net worth is actually worth something when the Bush-Obamaland disaster finally crashes, and second, because the fact that I do not live there makes the picture amusing for me (unlike the E.U. crisis, which affects me more immediately and therefore depresses me).
Perhaps more universally amusing, though, would be the difficult-to-deny assertion that little if anything that comes out of the mouth of any U.S. senator, Republican, Democrat or "Independant," is of any real relevance to any American, resident or expatriate.
Perhaps my thoughts are a bit exaggerated; however, what has just happened in DC seems significant. For the first time in my lifetime a house of congress in Washington DC has voted to repeal a bloated, bureaucratic law which had been passed earlier. Help me out here - has this ever happened? In 1933 prohibition was repealed. After 1994 the federal 55-mph highway speed law was repealed (or was it earlier?). Maybe this event doesn't mean anything - but nonetheless.
@KSMITH I asked if the Republicans helped pass it and people politely informed me that they had not done so. I dont know what your problem is, but for future reference, entering into a discussion by insulting people is not the best way to isn't the best way to get people to listen to what you have to say.
I apologize for the repeat in my last post.