GOP Will Block Health Care Reform

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-18-2008
GOP Will Block Health Care Reform
28
Sun, 11-23-2008 - 1:04am

Universal health care would be too popular with Americans and would hurt the GOP. That's what some of the right-wing think tanks are arguing. Apparently the goal of the GOP is to keep America unhealthy because it's good for the survival of the GOP.





Reports: Passing Universal Healthcare Could Kill The GOP



Barack Obama's selection of Tom Daschle as Health and Human Services Secretary, as well as "health reform czar," signals that the incoming president is serious about passing comprehensive healthcare reform. Over at the think tank Cato, Michael Cannon warns that blocking any such legislation is vital for the GOP's survival (h/t Kos):


Ditto Baucus' health plan. And Kennedy's. And Wyden's.



Why? Norman Markowitz, a contributing editor at PoliticalAffairs.net (motto: "Marxist Thought Online"), makes an interesting point about how making citizens dependent on the government for their medical care can change the fates of political parties:


A "single payer" national health system - known as "socialized medicine" in the rest of the developed world - should be an essential part of the change that the core constituencies which elected Obama desperately need. Britain serves as an important political lesson for strategists. After the Labor Party established the National Health Service after World War II, supposedly conservative workers and low-income people under religious and other influences who tended to support the Conservatives were much more likely to vote for the Labor Party...



James Pethokoukis, at U.S. News and World Report, draws the same conclusion as Cannon does from Markowitz's analysis of how universal healthcare changed the political dynamic in Britain:


The GOP strategist had been joking about the upcoming presidential election and giving his humorous assessments of the candidates. Then he suddenly cut out the schtick and got scary serious. "Let me tell you something, if Democrats take the White House and pass a big-government healthcare plan, that's it. Game over. Government will dominate the economy like it does in Europe. Conservatives will spend the rest of their lives trying to turn things around and they will fail..."


...Recently, I stumbled across this analysis of how nationalized healthcare in Great Britain affected the political environment there. As Norman Markowitz in Political Affairs, a journal of "Marxist thought," puts it: "After the Labor Party established the National Health Service after World War II, supposedly conservative workers and low-income people under religious and other influences who tended to support the Conservatives were much more likely to vote for the Labor Party when health care, social welfare, education and pro-working class policies were enacted by labor-supported governments."



Passing Obamacare would be like performing exactly the opposite function of turning people into investors. Whereas the Investor Class is more conservative than the rest of America, creating the Obamacare Class would pull America to the left. Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute, who first found that wonderful Markowitz quote, puts it succinctly in a recent blog post: "Blocking Obama's health plan is key to the GOP's survival." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/22/reports-passing-universal_n_145769.html


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iVillage Member
Registered: 08-13-2008
Sun, 11-23-2008 - 8:36am

I seriously doubt we go anywhere near a government based health care system. The WSJ called Obama's plan the better, and I expect we will see enough votes come across the aisle to get it done.

Full length fiction: http://llhaesa.org/ (pronounced la.hay.ess.sa)



Full length fiction: worlds undone

"You have no power over my body..." ~ Anne Hutchinson

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-18-2008
Sun, 11-23-2008 - 9:46am

Some heartening observations from David Broder . . .


*****



The architects of the Clintons' defeat were Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole, then the leaders of GOP forces in the House and Senate. Gingrich has now become an advocate for systemic change in the way health care is financed and delivered. His approach differs from Obama's, but it starts from the same premise: The current system is too wasteful and unproductive to be sustained.


And Dole, who in 1994 moved belatedly to opposing the Clinton effort as his own presidential ambitions rose, told me last week that today's circumstances make a repetition of those scorched-earth Republican tactics inappropriate. Instead, he is reminding Republicans of his own contributions to bipartisan successes -- the 1983 Social Security rescue and the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act in 1990.


Dole and Daschle have both worked for the firm of Alston and Bird for the past few years, and it would not surprise me if Dole finds ways to be helpful to Daschle and Obama in the coming fight.


Some have argued that Obama will be forced to delay his promised effort at health-care reform, either because of the urgency of the economic problems facing the country or because there will be no money in the budget to pay for such an enterprise.


But every indication is that he will not wait. Indeed, he could well argue that the current plight of the Big Three automakers stems in part from the burden that Ford, General Motors and Chrysler are carrying for the failures of our employer-based health-care system. One of their basic competitive disadvantages stems from the fact that Japanese and other foreign carmakers are operating in countries where government and society as a whole -- not individual companies -- pay the costs of health care.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/21/AR2008112102651.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-03-2008
Sun, 11-23-2008 - 9:52am
I really don't give a full porto-pottie what would kill the GOP. We NEED some kind of Health Care reform!
iVillage Member
Registered: 02-19-2008
Sun, 11-23-2008 - 12:50pm

I don't suppose it could possibly be that Ford, Chrysler and GM made foolish agreements that they couldn't afford, and are looking for the government to bail them out of their agreements (ie universal healthcare.)

For example, when any American reaches age 65, they qualify for Medicare. Which is our governments version of universal health care for seniors. Where are the big three workers, when it comes time to apply for Medicare? Nowhere to be found?

Even when universal health care is available, many avoid it.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-30-2007
Sun, 11-23-2008 - 12:58pm

My former Father-in-law used to work for a division of the Big 3.

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-19-2008
Sun, 11-23-2008 - 1:12pm
Exactly my point. If government-provided health care was something we should all aspire to why would your former FIL want to hang on to BC/BS in the first place? Apparently because as you say Medicare is a joke. Now why would the GOP say everyone should strive to have the same medical coverage that is a joke?
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iVillage Member
Registered: 07-03-2008
Sun, 11-23-2008 - 1:16pm
I don't understand that, why did she have to pay out so much?
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-30-2007
Sun, 11-23-2008 - 1:19pm
My ex-FIL had this back in the 70's.
iVillage Member
Registered: 02-19-2008
Sun, 11-23-2008 - 1:21pm
Oh my, Medicare is government run. We surely don't need any more of that around, do we?
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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-30-2007
Sun, 11-23-2008 - 1:41pm
Not exactly sure, but they made her pay for visits to Eye Dr. and a whole lot of things.

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