The current battle over “health care reform” is a great example of why representative government frustrates.
It’s not just that the vast majority of Americans who oppose the Democrats’ bill didn’t get their way. It’s that the proponents of socialized medicine (and that’s the real goal, here: The eventual complete government takeover of medicine) are playing a sort of obstacle-course race … as I argued yesterday.
Meanwhile, how the anti-Obamacare message hits Washington vexes, too.
Some partisan pundits and pollsters go so far as to say that the Democrats’ reform legislation suffers because it lacks a good name. “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” is not a catchy moniker. “Obamacare,” used primarily by its opponents, is super-catchy. And the Republicans repeal effort is pretty clever: “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act.”
Though “job-killing” may reference a hot, current topic, it is far from the most salient thing one might say against the Democrats’ rushed-through plan.
Standard politics: Even when politicians do the right thing, they push it for the wrong reason.
Media folk are now beginning to spin the popular opposition to Obamacare. Carefully worded polls “prove” that Americans aren’t overwhelmingly against the plan.
Which misses the real point: Incredulity. Democrats ballyhooed the notion that further government intervention into medicine would reduce costs. Nonsense, of course. And Americans know it.
That common-sense skepticism is precisely what gets lost in all the politics.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
5 replies on “What Gets Lost in Washington”
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A trillion dollars of new spending, 138 or so new commissions and regulators getting between you and your doctor, 100,000 pages of new regulation and, essentially, a federal government takeover of a sixth of the U.S. economy.
What’s not to love?
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We have a representative type of government but I wish our representatives stopped representing the insurance companies. All the buzz words miss the central point – who will pay for your health costs? Medicare pays for mine and I do not face all the evils the GOP foists on us. What happened to the GOP’s Death Squads? The big lie repeated often enough and someone will believe it.
Paul, you can call it whatever you want. I still call it Healthcare Reform. What do we have to do to get the Republicans to start thinking about helping Americans get better and less expensive health care.