What The Hell Is Going On With The Health Care Debate?

August 5, 2009

It’s been all over the news for the past several days. Opponents shouting down Democrat’s who are trying to hold town hall meetings to explain the health care bill.

On their summer break, Congressional members are traveling around their respective states trying to inform their constituents of what’s really in the bill. But they’re not having much luck getting the word out. They are being verbally attack wherever they go, and in some cases, physically accosted. Those in the meeting places who speak out in favor of the bill are told to shut up and sit down or leave. Watching several of the videos that I’ve recorded myself of these events, and a collection from YouTube, has left me with one single glaring image — the Iranian presidential election in that country earlier this year.

These hired guns, mostly by Dick Armey’s organization, FreedomWorks, are following many of the Democratic Senators and Representatives around their state with the sole intent of disrupting the town-hall meeting and not allowing them to speak. Unfortunately, it’s working. And why not — these guerilla tactics have proven very successful for the extremist in the Republican Party for fifteen years.

Harold Meyerson of The Washington Post published his commentary today on the very subject. He called his Filibuster Nation. And that’s exactly what we’ve become. Meyerson puts it very bluntly; “minority rule is what today’s Republicans are all about”. I have pointed that same fact out in many of my post. This group’s agenda is if they can’t have their way, they will destroy our democracy and our freedom.

The current health care system in this country is set up exactly the way the Republican extremist want it to be — giving all the power to the industry with the public having no options. As Kathleen Sebelius said in The Washington Post, “the current health-care system gives insurance companies all the power. They get to pick and choose who gets a policy. They can deny coverage because of a preexisting condition. They can offer coverage only at exorbitant rates — or offer coverage so thin that it’s no coverage at all. Americans are left to worry about whether they’ll get laid off and lose their insurance or wake up from surgery with a $10,000 bill because they didn’t read the fine print on their policy”. And that’s what the extremist want. They believe the working class citizens should have no rights.

Unfortunately this is not the first time the Republicans have scuttled health care reform. They did it in 1993 when Bill Clinton was President. And not surprising, these same Republicans are now accusing the Democrats of something that they, the Republicans, wanted in the 1993 health care reform bill — an end of life declaration. But there’s a slight difference in what the current Democrat bill offers (the option of preparing a living will) and what the Republicans wanted in 1993. In 1993 the Republicans wanted to make it mandatory for an applicant to fill out an end of life form before they could even apply for coverage under the government program. Obviously this is where the current-day Republican extremist got the idea from. As pointed out below, “the Republicans do it, then blame it on the Democrats”.

Concerning the 1993 health care reform attempt, Derek Bok of Harvard wrote “as the 20th century neared its end, the United States enjoyed the dubious distinction of having the highest health care costs in the world while being the only major democracy with a substantial fraction of the population still lacking basic medical insurance. On several occasions in this century, Congress seriously considered plans to provide universal health coverage. In each case, determined opposition led by physicians, big business, and Republican lawmakers blocked the proposals”. Then as now, the Republicans orchestrated a propaganda attack that virtually killed health care reform. They and their corporate friends have been laughing all the way to the bank ever since.

In 1994 Paul Starr of Princeton University, wrote “What Happened to Health Care Reform?”. In it he quotes Joe Klein: “The Republicans enjoyed a double triumph, killing reform and then watching jurors find the president guilty. It was the political equivalent of the perfect crime”. Starr also quoted Republican Senator Bob Packwood as telling his Republican colleagues now that they had killed health care reform, they had to make sure their fingerprints weren’t on it [bold added]. (Starr’s piece is very good. You should read it.)

As I’ve said many times in the past, I don’t trust the Democrats any more than I do the Republicans. However, the stunts the Republicans have pulled over the past decade or so, that can be describe no other way except dirty, deceitful and underhanded, makes one want to lean toward the Democrats if for no other reason than to choose the lesser of two evils. And this campaign the extremist Republicans have launched to defeat the Democratic bill is just about the bottom of the barrel when you consider they are so hypocritical about “Freedom of Speech”. I refer you to one of my quotes from this page; “When you can offer no trueful, accurate, and complete facts to support your argument, win by out-talking or talking over your opponent — especially if you know their argument is supported by all the above, but more importantly, if you don’t want anyone else hearing what they have to say”.