For It Before They Were Against It

by: David Sirota

Fri Mar 13, 2009 at 10:34


The idea of Republicans bashing anyone for flip-flopping is pretty ridiculous. This is the party that oversaw an explosion in federal spending and earmarking, and is now calling itself the party of fiscal austerity. It is the party that said it was against nation-building, and then led the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. It is the party that says it believes in individual freedom and privacy, and then trampled our civil liberties. Now, as I note in my newest weekly newspaper column, the GOP simultaneously says it is the party of competition - while trying to thwart competition in the health care industry.
David Sirota :: For It Before They Were Against It
We know that government health care programs are far more efficient than private health insurance. We know that patients in programs like Medicare are far more satisfied with their health care than patients in the private system. And so, we basically know that if private insurance is forced to directly compete with a public health insurance option, private insurance will lose, and lose huge.

Progressives think that's OK - we believe that if a public health care plan can outcompete private insurance, it should be allowed to do so. Republicans, by contrast, pay rhetorical homage to competition - while opposing a public health care plan specifically because they fear it will compete with the private insurance option.

It is hypocrisy of the highest order - and it is motivated by campaign contributions. The health insurance industry has underwritten the GOP for years - to the point where it can get the party to contradict its most basic philosophies. And that contradiction now threatens the prospect of real health care reform.

Read the whole column here.

The column relies on grassroots support - and because of that support, it is getting wider and wider circulation (a big thank you to all who have helped with that). So if you'd like to see my column regularly in your local paper, use this directory to find the contact info for your local editorial page editors. Get get in touch with them and point them to my Creators Syndicate site. Thanks, as always, for your ongoing readership and help contacting local editors. This column couldn't be what it is without your help.  

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For It Before They Were Against It | 5 comments
Opposition to the public (0.00 / 0)
option is based on common sense.

It is likely that if a pubic option is created it will not be a good faith competitor, in that it will gets its revenues from tax dollars AND premiums while its competitors will only get revenues from premiums.

Of course, the public program would succeed. It's not an even playing field.

Insurance industrial complex must go. (0.00 / 0)
There's nothing inherently unfair about a theoretical public/private double-whammy funding for health care. Since the public has to rely on it, it levels the playing field away from benefitting just the corporate sharks who have, and want to hoard, private profits up the yinyang.

Besides, you've made a good case for the single-payer system anyway, which would yield the most efficient, cost-effective and beneficial system for the public.

We don't need the stinkin' insurance companies to do health care. Totally unnecessary to actual HEALTH. And soaking citizens for exorbitant protection-money premiums while retaining sole discretion over deciding who gets what kind of medical care, who can be rejected, and who deserves to die because shareholder apologists want to keep profits artificially high is not actually health care!  

LOL, I thought you corporatists abhorred unnecessary bureaucracy! Except when it interferes with the invented corporate "right" to gouge pathetic citizens unnecessarily, right? Now get out of the way, we've got some dismantling to do.

[ Parent ]
Pathetic (4.00 / 1)
Because the government plan would be able to provide more affordable better health care, opposing it is "common sense." Oh, and because the government plan would be better, it's not fair competition. How friggin' pathetic an argument...
[ Parent ]
Where do you learn to debate, the O'reilly school (0.00 / 0)
As I pointed,

it's like any government plan would take tax dollars AND premiums. And that they wouldn't have to pay for their administrators, because the federal bureaucracy would pay for them out of tax dollars.

That's not a level playing field.

[ Parent ]
ny doctor forced to charge his patients more or face fines (0.00 / 0)
http://www.facebook.com/ext/sh...

ny doctor forced to charge his patients more or face fines  

whatever you think people owe you, that is what you owe people

For It Before They Were Against It | 5 comments
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