Health Care and Freedom
Rep Marsha Blackburn, (R-TN) argues that health reform will make Americans "less free".
“Today is the death of freedom as a cause for celebration,” Rep. Marsha Blackburn just said as she opened the House Republicans’ argument against the health-care bill. Her stem-winder was quick and clean. This bill, she argued, will make Americas less free.
There is a tendency to think this sort of inane hyperbole an innovation of our polarized age. But it isn’t. When Medicare was being considered, the American Medical Association hired Ronald Reagan to record a record housewives could play for their friends. It was called Operation: Coffee Cup, and you can read the text here.
Reagan was a more graceful speaker than Blackburn, but his point was much the same. Kill the bill. “If you don’t do this and if I don’t do it,” he said, “one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.”
Well, the bill passed. And moments ago, Rep. Paul Ryan was on the floor of the House, bellowing against Democrats who would dare propose “across-the-board cuts to Medicare.” This is breathless opportunism from Ryan — he has proposed far deeper across-the-board cuts to Medicare, and is making arguments against the Democrats’ bill that would be far more potent and accurate if aimed at his own — but leave that aside for a moment. The GOP’s embrace of the program that Ronald Reagan fought, and that Newt Gingrich sought to let “whither on the vine,” is based on the lived experience seniors have had with the bill: It has made them more, rather than less, free.
Blackburn’s introduction aside, people do not “celebrate” the freedom to not be able to afford lifesaving medical care. They don’t want the freedom to weigh whether to pay rent or take their feverish child to the emergency room. They don’t like the freedom to lose their job and then be told by insurers that they’re ineligible for coverage because they were born with a heart arrhythmia.
When faced with the passage of programs that would deliver people from these awful circumstances, the Republicans adopt a very narrow and cruel definition of the word “freedom.” But when faced with the existence of programs like Medicare, and the recognition that their constituents depend on those programs to live lives free of unnecessary fear and illness, they abandon their earlier beliefs, forget their dire warnings and, when convenient, defend these government protections aggressively. There’s nothing much to be done about that. It is, after all, a free country. But Americans should feel free to ignore these discredited hysterics.
By: Ezra Klein-Washington Post | March 21, 2010; 3:02 PM ET
The Ignorance of Arrogance
It never fails. During every election in recent memory, just about every candidate has campaigned on a slogan of reforming health care. The key word here is “slogan” as when you look back on what has been done over the years, we can all agree that absolutely nothing has been accomplished.
The times have now changed. Health reform bills have been passed in both the US House and most recently by the US Senate. There has been extensive and often heated debate on both sides over the last year, however we have gotten to the point of soon actually doing something substantive on this issue. The bills are now in conference and there is talk of expediting a final bill via “ping-ponging”. That suits me just fine.
I find it very interesting and exhausting to see the shifts in the discussions that have taken place over these last few months. People are screaming at the top of their voices because they are adamant against health reform going forward. It seems that these same people were perfectly content when health reform was just a slogan. We now hear rants of loss of “freedom and liberty” from the “backroom deals” of “radical democrats”. There is extreme talk of patients being separated from their doctors by all of the proposed changes in the proposed bills. All of a sudden, there is concern about the “process” and it’s “constitutionality”. Much of this concern and criticism is coming from many of my physician colleagues, some representing their on personal interests, others representing “front groups”. These same colleagues have taken extreme measures in expressing their objections, including vicious personal attacks on their fellow physicians and unprecedented attacks on Board members of the American Medical Association (AMA) . I find it quite distasteful and unprofessional for any physician, AMA member or not, to behave in such a fashion. We have sunk so far with the vile rhetoric, it seems now that the only layer left under our feet is the thin shelving just above hell.
It’s time to grow up people. You can’t have it both ways. If you demand honesty and transparency when you are out of power, demand the same when you are in power. It is quite obvious that this consistency was no where on the radar screen during the past decade. Tea, just like kool-aid, will definitely stain your teeth….stop drinking!. This is no longer your father’s medicine. It’s a new day and a new time. Throwing around terms like “freedom” and “liberty” are just not going to work anymore. These are simply buzz words for “I am no longer the top dog”. It’s time for you to stop playing the victim. There is a greater good that must be accomplished.
President Obama addresses American Medical Association on Health System Reform
AMA – Words and meaning are important in legislative politics
AMA – Words and meaning are important in legislative politics
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