Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Sarah Palin recently waded into the fever swamp of the debate over health care reform, claiming that the government would convene “death panels,” government bureaucrats who would determine if baby Trip deserves to live.
Although the Economist calls these claims “outrageous” and even the Wall Street Journal labels such rhetoric “over the top,” such contemptible nonsense has come to permeate the health care reform debate. Congressional town hall meetings resonate with such base, baseless Palinesque demagoguery. All of this depresses me tremendously, not because I’m in favor of the Democrats’ plans to reform health care per se, but depressed that this country seems incapable of having a reasonable debate about the issue, and right-wing hacks such as Palin deserve the lion’s share of the blame for this.
I wanted to witness this spectacle of American democracy myself, so a couple of weeks ago I drove up to Holton to Congresswoman Lynn Jenkins’ town hall meeting. I crowded into the old stone high-ceilinged Hutchins building adjacent the Jackson County courthouse with a hundred or so fellow Kansans.
Most of them were more than happy to hear Jenkins frame the Democrats’ plans as an expansion of government bureaucracy, depriving hard-working citizens of basic choice in medical care and costing way too much money. One guy described it as “communism” to a resounding round of applause.
When I got a chance to ask a question, I made the mistake of introducing myself as a University of Kansas student. And I was booed! I didn’t realize there was so much hostility in rural Kansas to our town and this University. Maybe this is something that many of you know all too well — that Lawrence has a reputation in certain parts of the state as the proverbial Sodom on the Kaw, brimming with communists and homosexuals. I am neither, for better or worse, but I still felt that I was gazing out at these people from across vast cultural divide.
I asked Rep. Jenkins why we shouldn’t support universal coverage of some sort, like any other developed country, and she basically said that most of the uninsured didn’t want or didn’t need coverage.
But this way of framing the issue belies the basic problem. This country spends thousands and thousands of dollars per capita more on health coverage than anywhere else, and we get far less value for our money.
Even if you don’t believe, as I do, that we have a moral imperative to provide decent health coverage to every American, you have to consider the possibility that it is possible to be completely rational and self-interested and still support health care reform.
The health care system must explicitly cover everyone in order to bring down costs and solve this fundamental problem of value.
— Thompson is a Topeka senior in economics.
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Comments
Thompson: Conservative rhetoric proves harmful to health care debate
Many conservatives agree that we need to figure out a way to offer healthcare to everyone. The problem, though Democrats don't like to pose it this way, is that the current Obama plan relies far too much on federal money.
Conservatives point out first that government entitlement programs are already a great burden to our public debt and could pose tremendous danger to our economy in the near future. Creating another massive entitlement program is very dangerous in this respect.
Instead of setting up a system that only promises to continue to spend trillions of dollars down the road, why not spend the money working on ways to reduce medical costs for everyone, reduce bureaucracy in health insurance and promote more healthy lifestyles in America? These are examples on one time spending that can result in generations of savings.
Finally, there are issues of private v public that scare conservatives. Our federal government was never intended to get this big, not nearly this big. We have far passed the point where we could adequately control our federal government as a collection of states.
I agree that often the debate gets out of hand and I applaud your attempt here to bring civility to it.
Thompson: Conservative rhetoric proves harmful to health care debate
The system works, guys. These small businesses provide a needed service to anyone who can afford it, just the way the founding fathers intended. This is a free country, but it's not the free like in "free beer" so you need to put in a little effort so that you can make something of yourself and earn enough so you have the money to pay for your own insurance.
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