Conservatives: overdriving their headlights
Newt “Mister Morality” Gingrich says Obama is the “most radical president in US history”. If so, then we’re a reactionary country. After all, the health care reform act might have been cribbed from Mitt Romney’s final exam, and the nuclear arms-reduction treaty is almost verbatim Reagan. I suppose it could be a radical idea that corporations which are large enough to affect The General Welfare of society as a whole should face regulation by that society, from the perspective of those corporations. For those of us who breathe air, drink water, eat food, and depend on our retirement funds still being available when we reach the age, it’s common sense.
Still licking their wounds from the health care debate (in which they won nearly everything they wanted) conservatives are now freaking out about the nuclear arms treaty with Russia. And no wonder! We will be left practically defenseless with the world’s strongest conventional armed forces, plus only 1,500 nuclear warheads, and a treaty that forbids using them on non-nuclear powers, unless (as specifically provided in the treaty) we need to reconsider that provision in the event of a biological attack.
Not good enough, says Michele Bachmann; we might need to nuke someone over a cyber-attack. Without that option, we can’t feel safe!
Asked about Sarah Palin’s criticism of the treaty, Obama answered truthfully that Palin isn’t much of an expert on nuclear arms issues. Palin, ignoring Obama’s work in the Senate on counter-proliferation, and the fact that he consults with the joint chiefs and other real experts, retorted that he isn’t either, so there. Coming from her, the world’s leading expert on everything, that’s quite an indictment.
(There’s plenty of evidence the that for at least a generation, the right wing has been itching to nuke someone. Just looking for an excuse. That alone is reason enough to keep them out of office.)
Now Justice Stevens is retiring, and the right wing is already planning its obstruction, with the name of the nominee to be filled in later.
But I don’t want to be unfair to the right wing; they do have a softer, more forgiving side. For instance, if Michael Steele turns out to be a terrible manager, a self-aggrandizing profligate fool, and unable to keep RNC budget line items for exotic strip clubs from being expensed and approved, well, that’s certainly an item they’re going to discuss with the appropriate individuals real soon now, probably. And if one after another of their group turns out to be sexually incontinent, or to be deeply dependent on government handouts (while denouncing same), or just plain hypocritical in every way imaginable (Yeah, I’m talkin’ to you, Newt), all they have to do is point a finger at Obama and yell; “Socialist!” and all is forgiven.
Basically they’re against anything that a liberal is for, no matter how much sense it makes strategically, economically, or environmentally. They’ll deny any fact, toss aside any CBO report, or ridicule any science as long as it lets them end up conservative. Which should not be confused with conserving anything. You have to wonder if they like to drive faster after dark just for the thrill of overdriving their headlights.
- Yes, I know it would be more grammatically correct to say “things the right wing IS freaking out about”. I’m just that kind of rascal.
Back when they were having the election for RNC chairman a year or so ago, I thought Steele sounded like the best of the field, and little he’s done since surprises me. The others were that bad.
The one thing Republicans are good at is making Democratic politicians look good in comparison. That’s a trick few others manage these days.
Conservatives did not win everything they wanted in the health care debate or bill. I may only be speaking for myself, but I wanted the bill to go away as written. I wanted it to fail.
I wanted reform. I wanted a freer insurance market, I wanted tort reform. I wanted politicians that would see the potential damage this bill would do and say no. I wanted a politician to ask the hard questions that were not being asked, like why this emergency bill won’t take full effect until after the next election.
I certainly didn’t get what I wanted.
But, truth be told, I agree with Cujo – the Republicans lately have been good only at making Democrats look good, something I don’t feel even they can pull off that well.
Well David, I didn’t get what I wanted either, which is single-payer, socialized medicine, so we can both cry in our beer. But you should know that tort reform, while clearly the favored erotic dream of insurance companies, simply transfers risk to patients and won’t lower the cost of medical care significantly.
Patients need another channel of accountability to address malpractice. Right now, tort law is just about their only option, and there will be no tort reform (or at least there shouldn’t be) until there’s some other way to address medicine’s most dangerous practitioners.
And frankly, the recent performance of the health insurance industry has made me rather unsympathetic to a “freer” insurance market. The result of even less regulation might well be that you or just someone in your family won’t be able to get insurance, or that it might be rescinded if you actually make a claim.
Many people have objected to the mandatory insurance requirement. I’m not too thrilled about it either but if you’re not going to have single payer, and you’re not going to let companies reject people for pre-existing conditions, the floor is open to suggestions, as to how to make sure people don’t just sign up when they get sick and drop insurance after they get well. Insurance is, after all, about spreading risk.
As for politicians just saying “no” to this bill, that would prolong the status quo, which was headed for a fall. We might find the system set up in the bill – which will take time to implement, by the way – is unworkable and that we should go to single-payer. That’s my prediction, actually. So sad if the health insurance companies find themselves with a tiny customer base of the very wealthy who want deluxe service (and can afford to pay for it without them).
the floor is open to suggestions, as to how to make sure people don’t just sign up when they get sick and drop insurance after they get well.
Only idiots would do that if they could pay for the insurance, George. This is one of the great unexamined assumptions of this debate that everyone wants to treat as if it were a fact – that people would only sign up when they knew they were sick. While they’re probably more likely to sign up when they know they’ll be sick, there are plenty of things that can happen that require very expensive medical attention that are neither predictable nor pre-existing.
As one of the apparently few people who ever thought to check on this assumption, I found a paper that compiles research on this subject. Here’s a summary of one such study, and here’s another. Wouldn’t you know, there’s no actual evidence to suggest that this would be a problem?
OTOH, I paid into the insurance system for almost thirty years, and now I couldn’t possibly afford a policy that would do me any good unless I won the lottery. There are plenty of people just like me, too.
Guys like Paul Krugman are willing to shoot their mouths off about what makes economic sense. The problem is, they’re not willing to look up whether it’s actually true. Sometimes, this whole health care debate has seemed like an excellent example of why the phrase “well, it works in practice, but what’s the theory say?” applies so well to economics.
Everyone who actually had any influence over this bill seems to have been so worried that the poor insurance companies would be taken advantage of that they just seem to have forgotten to ensure that the insurance companies wouldn’t take advantage of the rest of us.
Amazing how that worked out.
Not sure what you expected from our political process. Suffice to say my hopes and my expectations were not in alignment. About half the country takes it as a given that if the very richest were forced to act as if society were a single fabric, that our republic would end.
Thanks for the links; I am working through them.
Alas, not a small percentage of the population. It’s tempting to say, in effect, “Let them eat cake” but emergency care is an expensive substitute for routine health care, and one we all end up paying for.
They’re not small, but there’s no evidence to suggest they’re actually important. Those summaries and studies I pointed to all make the point that people who take care of themselves, and presumably have fewer health issues, are also the ones more likely to have insurance. That tends to make the costs lower. So people “cheating” by buying at the last minute may not be a problem at all. Yet people are perfectly willing to assume that they will be, without any clear evidence.
That’s what I’m saying.
Speaking of desired outcomes, though, something that was clear from those studies is that the one reason that people clearly will avoid buying insurance is when the price is high (relative to what they can pay) and the value of it is low. That’s precisely the situation we now have. It will work out the way it does in Massachusetts, where people are now obligated to buy insurance that they can’t afford to use.
Which means that they’ll still be getting their care in emergency rooms, because they won’t even have primary care physicians. (Admittedly, the expansion of free clinics in the HCR bill may mitigate this, but only if there is enough money to cover a good deal of the country’s population, and the fact that they exist becomes widely known.)
This isn’t about desired outcomes – it’s about the government doing something so stupid that it has made things worse for many of the people who needed health care, despite the obvious evidence.
I’m still amazed at how people can look at Newt as a beacon of rationality. I think he’s going to run next presidential election and I predict he gets the ballot nod. I hope the country sees through his bullshit.