For years, Democrats wrongly portrayed GOP proposals to curb the growth of Medicare as attempts to kick medicine out of Granny’s hand. Now the roles have reversed, and Republicans are falsely accusing Democrats of cutting Medicare benefits as part of the health care reform proposals. Some may cheer this role reversal as “turnabout is fair play.” But it shows how both parties are willing to scare seniors in order to score political points. No wonder it is so difficult to reform entitlement programs.
As proof of how they aren’t just sitting on the sidelines and saying “no” to health care reform, GOP lawmakers point to all the amendments they have offered, and how Democratic lawmakers aren’t interested in making the bills more bipartisan. But Dana Milbank of the Washington Post reported that many of the GOP amendments are aimed at playing to the GOP base or some special-interest concern. For example, Sen. Orrin Hatch (in photo), R-Utah, offered an amendment, apparently facetiously, that would have added “transition relief for the excise tax on high-cost insurance plans for any state with a name that begins with the letter ‘U.’” Rep. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, offered an amendment that Milbank said sounded like a GOP parody: It would eliminate fees charged to private health insurance companies and make up the shortfall by reducing benefits to poor people. The amendment was defeated on a party-line vote.
Columnist Bill Roy recently recalled, with some astonishment, having met a man at a town meeting held by Rep. Lynn Jenkins, R-Topeka, who said he relied on government-paid dialysis, which cost $28,000 a month, but strongly opposed government-run medicine. Roy wrote: “It is not uncommon for people to grow to dislike those they are totally dependent upon.”
The man, Matthew Asher of Holton, responded in a letter to the Topeka Capital-Journal: “I hate that my treatment is paid for by the government. Yes, I said ‘hate.’ The more the government pays, the more control it wants. And that control will be between you and your doctor. Is that the kind of care you want?” He also wrote: “I may have lost control of my medical treatment, but I have not lost the right to voice my concerns about the direction some in Washington, D.C., are trying to take us.”
“If the Democrats in the House and in the Senate think that the American public wants to have the government take over health care, then I think it will be at their own peril.” — Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, on Fox News
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., argued that a 72-hour delay between the Senate Finance Committee’s markup and vote on a health care reform bill was needed to give time for “the people that the providers have hired to keep up with all of the legislation that we pass around here, and the regulations that we pass around here, to say, ‘Hey, wait a minute. Have you considered this?’” That’s a reasonable suggestion, as lobbyists are an important part of the legislative process.
But the Democratic National Committee produced an ad claiming Roberts’ comments revealed how the GOP is protecting the health insurance industry. The “Colbert Report” on Comedy Central lampooned Roberts’ “bold admission” that the delay is really about giving time for health care lobbyists to change the bill. Host Stephen Colbert congratulated Roberts for coming “out of the closet” about his committed relationship with the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, noting the campaign donations Roberts has received from both groups. “I say, ‘Good for you, sir,” Colbert said of Roberts. “The truth shall set you free.”
Singer Paul Hipp is making his own contribution to the health care discussion with his catchy video “We’re No. 37,” highlighting the World Health Organization’s ranking of the United States as 37th among health systems. The Web site PolitiFact.com noted that other WHO rankings have put the U.S. system in 15th place and first place (the latter for responsiveness). “Still, this is a rock song, and a well-sourced one at that. So we find Hipp’s claim to be Mostly True,” the fact-checkers declared.
The Kansas Democratic Party posted a YouTube video of Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, making another misstatement at a recent town hall meeting on health care. This time, Tiahrt said that a committee was going to determine what every doctor would make, and that the salaries would be between $85,000 and $95,000. But as FactCheck.org has reported, that’s not true. If there is a public insurance option, the government would set reimbursement rates, as it does for Medicare and Medicaid and as private insurance companies do. But nothing in the bill would set salaries for doctors.
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., was among the GOP lawmakers on the Senate Finance Committee who rejected out of hand the health care reform compromise offered by committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont. Roberts said he had no confidence that the compromises ultimately would be honored. “All indications are that this bill will be pulled increasingly toward more cost, more regulations and more rationing as it continues through this process,” Roberts said Tuesday. He also downplayed the size of the health insurance problem, saying that the reforms would “gain insurance coverage for a relatively small number of uninsured Americans” and that “in Kansas and throughout this country, people largely just want to be left the heck alone.”
First lady Michelle Obama argued in a speech last week that health insurance reform is “very much a women’s issue.” Appearing with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Obama noted that women are disproportionately hurt by inadequate health insurance because they are more likely to work as part-time employees or in small businesses — jobs that are less likely to offer health insurance, the Washington Post reported. Women pay more for insurance than men of similar age for the same coverage, Obama said, and they are predominantly responsible for making medical appointments for their children and dealing with sick and elderly parents.
“Rich or poor, young or old, we all face the injustice of life — it ends too soon, and statistical probability is no comfort. We are all in the same boat, you and me and ex-Governor Palin and Congressman Joe Wilson, and wealth and social status do not prevail against disease and injury. And now we Americans must reform our health insurance system so that it reflects our common humanity. It is not decent that people avoid seeking help for want of insurance. It is not decent that people go broke trying to get well. You know it and I know it. Time to fix it.” — Writer and radio host Garrison Keillor, in a commentary reflecting on his recent mild stroke
Eyebrows have been raised at President Obama’s decision to let Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius lead his inquiry into how best to reduce costly medical malpractice lawsuits. That’s because before Sebelius was HHS secretary, Kansas governor or Kansas insurance commissioner, she was director of the then-Kansas Trial Lawyers Association. On Thursday the Obama administration announced that states and health care systems would receive $25 million in grants to begin a national experiment on alternatives to malpractice suits. Asked about her tort reform assignment by the Washington Post, Sebelius said: “I think I’m just the person to do it because I think I understand the system of litigation very well. I understand that we want to, as the president has always said, compensate injured victims, but the defensive medicine is not helpful to the overall cost in the system. The best opportunity is to raise the quality of care and lower medical errors, so there are lots of strategies we can put in place.” Many are skeptical, including Weekly Standard blogger Mary Katharine Ham, who translated Sebelius’ answer as: “The fox is uniquely qualified to guard the henhouse, because he understands the delicious taste of poultry very well.”
Best-selling author Thomas Frank — who was in Wichita this week to publicize his book “The Wrecking Crew” — told The Eagle editorial board that he was fascinated and frustrated by the August town hall meetings. He thought that despite their incivility, some of the protesters asked good questions about freedom and personal responsibility. But he thought Democratic members of Congress dropped the ball in answering those questions. “It was embarrassing,” he said. Frank argued, as he did in his Wall Street Journal column this week, that freedom is greater than the absence of government, as many protesters define it — it also should include a minimal standard of living. And he considers health care to be a shared public good.
Lawmakers from both political parties say President Obama’s health care plan needs Republican votes to pass. It does. The need for GOP support stretches beyond vote tallying to political ownership of complicated policy change. For the public to buy the changes, the plan cannot be the Democratic health care program. It should be at least in part bipartisan. Otherwise, reform becomes an easy political punching bag. Republicans have been more obstructionist and delay-prone because they fear a big government program is not the answer. A big fuss ensued about the deadline for passing such legislation. Dates don’t matter as much as a workable plan that attracts support from at least a few Republicans. Reform will benefit Americans of all political stripes. To succeed, the new policies must gain the support of lawmakers in both parties. — Seattle Times editorial
Though there are obvious dangers to abandoning bipartisanship on such a hot-button issue, you have to wonder what took the Democrats so long. The reality is that bipartisanship is hard to achieve and is no guarantee of public policy success. For example, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed the Senate with only two dissenting votes, hastening the escalation of the Vietnam War. Perhaps a little obstruction might have been a good thing. On the flip side, Medicare passed without a single Republican vote and is today one of most successful and popular of all government programs. In the end, the success of health care reform will not be judged by how many Republicans (or Blue Dog Democrats) vote for it. It will be judged by how well it works. The stakes are high for both parties, but sometimes going it alone is not so bad. — Jamie Moeller, Global Public Affairs Practice
Columnist David Brooks noted how President Obama “threw out enough rhetorical chum to keep the liberals happy” during his speech to Congress. But Brooks also noted how Obama staked out ground in the center on nearly every substantive issue, including the deficit. Brooks wrote: “Obama rested the credibility of his presidency on what you might call the Dime Standard. He was flexible about many things, but not this: ‘I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits — either now or in the future. Period.’ This sound bite kills the House health care bill. That bill would add $220 billion (that’s 2.2 trillion dimes) to the deficit over the first 10 years and another $1 trillion (10 trillion dimes) to the deficit over the next 10 years. There is no way to get from the House bill to deficit neutrality. The president’s speech guarantees that the more moderate Senate Finance Committee bill will be the basis for the negotiations to come.”
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s claim of health care “death panels” has been thoroughly debunked and called “nuts” by the GOP lawmaker who originally sponsored the proposal. So Palin is trying a new approach: blaming Democrats for causing people to think the claim was true. In a commentary in the Wall Street Journal this week, Palin wrote: “Is it any wonder that many of the sick and elderly are concerned that the Democrats’ proposals will ultimately lead to rationing of their health care by — dare I say it — death panels? Establishment voices dismissed that phrase, but it rang true for many Americans.” So facts don’t matter because her claim “rang true”? Or as Politico’s Glenn Thrush summarized Palin’s reasoning: “‘Rang true’ is morally equivalent to ‘true.’”
Public discontent has taken a toll on the momentum to reform health care. But there’s another agent of no change at work — the health insurance industry, which, noted columnist Paul Krugman, “has become a political behemoth, one that is currently spending $1.4 million a day lobbying Congress.” Krugman foresees corporate influence, helped along by the GOP, thwarting other meaningful action on climate change and fiscal balance. He concluded: “True transformation, it turns out, requires a lot more than electing one telegenic leader. Actually turning this country around is going to take years of siege warfare against deeply entrenched interests, defending a deeply dysfunctional political system.”
As President Obama preps for Wednesday’s speech to Congress on health care, New York Times columnist David Brooks hopes he’ll reacquaint himself with the “perverse incentives” and health care inflation that are the systemic problems and consider some of the substantive proposals out there to restructure the insurance market, cap the employee tax deduction and more. “This is not the time to get incremental. It’s the time to get fundamental,” Brooks writes. “Reform the incentives. Make consumers accountable for spending. Make price information transparent. Reward health care, not health services.”
Were the “liberal” media to blame for health reform’s stumble last month? The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne thinks so. “I’ve spoken with Democratic House members, most from highly contested districts, about what happened in their town halls,” he wrote. “None would deny polls showing that the health-reform cause lost ground last month, but little of the probing civility that characterized so many of their forums was ever seen on television.” Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Texas, told Dionne he viewed the shouters at his meetings as taking “the Ron Paul libertarian position that represents 2 to 5 percent of the country.”
Like his predecessor, Gov. Mark Parkinson supports a statewide smoking ban in public places. He said this week that he also may push for an increase in the state’s 79 cents-a-pack cigarette tax. Both moves could help lower the yearly toll that smoking-related illness takes on Kansas, including 4,000 deaths and $200 million in Medicaid costs. And the statewide public ban makes sense, given the proven health risks of secondhand smoke. But with so many communities now having their own indoor clean-air ordinances, passing a statewide ban becomes more complicated. In Wichita, for example, some businesses that chose last year to continue to allow smoking spent money to create smoking rooms with separate ventilation. Will public health trump local control?
A San Jose Mercury News editorial noted the interesting historical role reversal on health care reform. Nearly 40 years ago, President Nixon argued forcefully for an employer mandate and for government-run insurance pools as an option for those who couldn’t obtain private insurance, but the effort was opposed by Sen. Ted Kennedy, who favored a single-payer system. “In the years leading up to his death last week,” the editorial said, “Kennedy must have regretted this, as he heard the ideas that Nixon once espoused as conservative doctrine now slandered as socialism when proposed by President Barack Obama.”
Warning against pushing through health reform on a party-line vote, former Kansas Sen. Bob Dole writes in the Washington Post that President Obama should come forward with his own version of reform, predicting his poll numbers would shoot up 10 percentage points if Americans knew he had taken charge. “A bipartisan ending will have more credibility with the American people,” Dole writes. “Indeed, most important legislation in U.S. history has had broad bipartisan support. As a supporter of bipartisan health reform, I hope the president has gotten some rest in the past week. I also hope he puts the final touches on his own health bill. I’d bet a bottle of aspirin that it would cure many of his headaches.”
What to call that worrisome flu came up at last week’s Sedgwick County Commission meeting, with Chairman Kelly Parks noting the concern of hog producers about the negative impact of the use of the term “swine flu” on the pork industry. “There’s no correlation” between hogs and the virus, Parks stressed. “That’s why we’re calling it the H1N1 now.” According to the federal Web site www.flu.gov, H1N1 is not transmitted by food and “at this time, there is no evidence that swine in the United States are infected with this new virus.”
But a new poll sponsored by KWCH, Channel 12, suggests that message could use further reinforcement by elected officials and others. Of those Kansans surveyed last week, 67 percent said they refer to it as “swine flu” and 29 percent said they associate the virus with pigs.
Newly requiring underage students to take an interactive online course about the risks and effects of alcohol won’t wipe out binge drinking at the University of Kansas. But after two alcohol-related fatalities last spring, KU needed to do something. And more education and awareness can’t hurt. KU also has made changes to encourage students to get help with alcohol-related emergencies and to notify parents when their students violate drug and alcohol policies. The father of one of the KU students put it bluntly in the Denver Post: “One week of fraternity living killed him. He overdrank. Kids have got to understand alcohol is the worst.”
A blogger for the Atlantic wondered this week: “Where would health care be right now if Tom Daschle were in charge of shepherding it through Congress?” Former Senate Republican leader Bill Frist also said of former Democratic leader Daschle, who now has an informal advisory role to Obama: “His experience with being leader, his understanding of the legislative process, his ability to negotiate is what President Obama needs now, and what he needed months ago when he started the process — and he doesn’t have it.”
