Republicans fight Universal Healthcare Because it Could Kill The GOP

How Tom Daschle Might Kill Conservatism
November 21, 2008
by James Pethokoukis
U.S. News and World Report

The GOP strategist had been joking about the upcoming presidential election and giving his humorous assessments of the candidates. Then he suddenly cut out the schtick and got scary serious. "Let me tell you something, if Democrats take the White House and pass a big-government healthcare plan, that's it. Game over. Government will dominate the economy like it does in Europe. Conservatives will spend the rest of their lives trying to turn things around and they will fail."

And it turns out that the fearsome harbinger of free-market doom is the mild-mannered ex-U.S. senator with the little, red glasses, Tom Daschle. He'll be the guy shepherding President Barack Obama's healthcare plan through Congress via his probable role as secretary of health and human services. At the core of Daschle's thinking on the subject is the creation of a "Federal Health Board that would resemble our current Federal Reserve Board" and ensure "harmonization across public programs of health-care protocols, benefits, and transparency." (Forget secretary of state, Hillary Clinton should shoot for chairman of Fed Health and run one seventh of the U.S. economy.) And the subject of that "harmonization" would be a $100 billion to $150 billion a year plan that would let individuals (and small businesses) buy insurance from private companies or from a government plan.

Daschle and the Obamacrats certainly have the momentum: a near-landslide presidential election victory, at least 58 Democratic votes in the Senate, and a nasty recession that will make many Americans yearn for economic security. Already the health insurance companies seem set back on their heels. The industry's trade organization now says it would accept new rules requiring them to cover pre-existing conditions as long as there was a universal mandate for all Americans to have health insurance. On top of all that, Obama clearly wants to make healthcare reform a priority in his first term, as evidenced by the selection of a heavy hitter like Daschle. And even if he wasn't interested, Congress sure is, with Max Baucus and Ted Kennedy readying a plan in the Senate. A few observations:

1) Passage would be a political gamechanger. Recently, I stumbled across this analysis of how nationalized healthcare in Great Britain affected the political environment there. As Norman Markowitz in Political Affairs, a journal of "Marxist thought," puts it: "After the Labor Party established the National Health Service after World War II, supposedly conservative workers and low-income people under religious and other influences who tended to support the Conservatives were much more likely to vote for the Labor Party when health care, social welfare, education and pro-working class policies were enacted by labor-supported governments."

Passing Obamacare would be like performing exactly the opposite function of turning people into investors. Whereas the Investor Class is more conservative than the rest of America, creating the Obamacare Class would pull America to the left. Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute, who first found that wonderful Markowitz quote, puts it succinctly in a recent blog post: "Blocking Obama's health plan is key to the GOP's survival."

2) Shrinking government would get exponentially tougher. Republicans would face the same problem with healthcare that they currently do with Social Security, persuading people to trade one in the hand (the current system) for two in the bush (a reformed system). And we see how well that has worked out. Combine Obamacare with plans to take away the tax-advantaged status of 401(k) plans and IRAs and you would end up with government responsible for both healthcare and retirement. The big-government constituency would grow and deepen. And remember that fewer and fewer people are paying the incomes taxes that would help pay for increased government services. That breakage of the linkage between taxes and government "benefits" creates toxic incentives for more of both " and an economy more shackled than ever by taxes, debt, and regulation.

3) Republicans better earn to competently talk healthcare. John McCain's healthcare plan was perhaps the most provocative policy proposal of the entire 2008 campaign. Too bad he could neither fully explain how it worked nor persuasively argue why it was better than Barack Obama's plan. Also too bad since his plan would have smartly reduced healthcare costs by getting companies out of the healthcare benefits business and empowering individuals to buy insurance on their own. This would have helped fix what economist Arnold Kling calls the insurance vs. insulation problem: "Insulation relieves the patient of the stress of making decisions about treatment. The patient also does not have to worry about shopping around for the best price. The problem with insulation is that it is not a sustainable form of healthcare finance."

Another interesting healthcare reform option is highlighted by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam in the book Grand New Party. Uncle Sam would require individuals and families to put 15 percent of their income into health savings accounts. If you run out of money before year-end, the government steps in. If you don't, you get the money back or it rolls over into a retirement account. Of course, any conservative alternative would be easier to implement if it doesn't first have to kill an existing nationalized health plan. But thanks to Tom Daschle, that is just what might have to happen.

The next time you wonder why so many millions of Americans don't have and can't get affordable health care insurance, blame the Republican Party and it's motivation to protect the Party's interests. If you wonder why the Republicans fight so hard to defeat universal healthcare, think Party first; Americans last.

BBB

Yes.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/may96/background/health_debate_page2.html

Thanks for the additional information, Blatham. I always thought the reason why the Republicans tried so hard to destroy Bill Clinton's presidency was to prevent universal health care.

What a bunch of compassionate sweeties!

BBB

I read this statement some time ago. Can't recall when or where. Sounds like the truth to me.

edgar

It is the truth. Kristol's memo fell into the wrong hands (though he was likely less careful in those days). I've posted it a number of times, so likely you've seen it here.

The notable aspect for me is Kristol's total lack of concern for citizens' health and well-being. His concern is only Republican electoral chances up the road. He's a pretty despicable character in my books.

The real shocking fact is that the Republicans wanted to maintain control of the government to further the financial interests of their actual base, the wealthy corporate elite. They had no interest in governing as long as they could loot the treasury and increase their wealth. The Religious Right fell for their con and enabled the Republicans to maintain their power via the false claim that they protected their interests. They didn't give a damn about the Religious Right as long as they helped them to maintain their power.

That why I always considered the Republican Elite to be the criminal class.

BBB

Health-Care Reform Could Kill the GOP
by Thomas Frank - Huffington Post
Posted December 3, 2008

Can policy be both wise and aggressively partisan? Ask any Republican worth his salt and the answer will be an unequivocal yes. Ask a Democrat of the respectable Beltway variety and he will twist himself into a pretzel denying it.

For decades Republicans have made policy with a higher purpose in mind: to solidify the GOP base or to damage the institutions and movements aligned with the other side. One of their fondest slogans is "Defund the Left," and under that banner they have attacked labor unions and trial lawyers and tried to sever the links between the lobbying industry and the Democratic Party. Consider as well their long-cherished dreams of privatizing Social Security, which would make Wall Street, instead of Washington, the protector of our beloved seniors. Or their larger effort to demonstrate, by means of egregious misrule, that government is incapable of delivering the most basic services.

That these were all disastrous policies made no difference: The goal was to use state power to achieve lasting victory for the ideas of the right.

On the other side of the political fence, strategic moves of this kind are fairly rare. Instead, for most of my lifetime, prominent Democratic leaders have been chucking liberalism itself for the sake of immediate tactical gain.

Former President Bill Clinton, who is widely regarded as a political mastermind, may have sounded like a traditional liberal at the beginning of his term in office. But what ultimately defined his presidency was his amazing pliability on matters of principle. His most memorable innovation was "triangulating" between his own party and the right, his most famous speech declared and end to "the era of big government," his most consequential policy move was to cement the consensus on deregulation and free trade, and many of his boldest stands were taken against his own party.

The results were not pretty, either for the Democrats or for the nation.

Still, conservatives have always dreaded the day that Democrats discover (or rediscover) that there is a happy political synergy between delivering liberal economic reforms and building the liberal movement. The classic statement of this fear is a famous memo that Bill Kristol wrote in 1993, when he had just started out as a political strategist and the Clinton administration was preparing to propose some version of national health care.

"The plan should not be amended; it should be erased," Mr. Kristol advised the GOP. And not merely because Mr. Clinton's scheme was (in Mr. Kristol's view) bad policy, but because "it will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests."

Historian Rick Perlstein suggests that this memo is "the skeleton key to understanding modern American politics" because it opens up a fundamental conservative anxiety: "If the Democrats succeed in redistributing economic power, we're screwed."

In the Clinton years, of course, it was the Republicans who succeeded. And the Democrats' failure -- the failure to deliver national health care that is, not the act of proposing national health care -- was a crucial element, in Mr. Perlstein's view, in the Republican Revolution of 1994. Assessing the accomplishments of the "party of the people" after those first months of Clintonism, middle-class Americans were left with what? A big helping of Nafta. Mmm-mmm.

Fourteen years later, we find ourselves at the same point in the political debate, with a Democratic president-elect promising to deliver some variety of health-care reform. And, like a cuckoo emerging from a clock, Mr. Kristol's old refrain is promptly taken up by a new chorus. "Blocking Obama's Health Plan Is Key to the GOP's Survival," proclaims the headline of a November blog post by Michael F. Cannon, the libertarian Cato Institute's director of Health Policy Studies. His argument, stitched together from other blog posts, is pretty much the same as Mr. Kristol's in 1993. Any kind of national medical program would be so powerfully attractive to working-class voters that it would shift the tectonic plates of the nation's politics. Therefore, such a program must be stopped.

Liberal that I am, I support health-care reform on its merits alone. My liberal blood boils, for example, when I read that half of the personal bankruptcies in this country are brought on, in part, by medical expenses. And my liberal soul is soothed to find that an enormous majority of my fellow citizens agree, in general terms, with my views on this subject.

But it pleases me even more to think that the conservatives' nightmare of permanent defeat might come true simply if Democrats do the right thing. No, health-care reform isn't as strategically diabolical as, say, the K Street Project. It involves only the most straightforward politics: good government stepping in to heal an ancient, festering wound. But if by doing this Barack Obama also happens to nullify decades of conservative propaganda, so much the better for all of us.

The GOP's battle to block Obama's universal healthcare campaign is already starting. Keep in mind the real reason they fight it.

BBB

I agree it's an issue that makes the GOP wet it's collective pants, but if this country gets Universal Healthcare it will be because Republican CEO's and conservative companies like WalMart no longer want to be the nanny providers for their workers. The world of Big Business is watching companies like GM getting pulled down by the cost of Corporate Socialism and they realize it kills their ability to compete in the world. As people of all classes lose their benefits they are going to turn to the government for support (as we are already seeing). I think the GOP is going to find they no longer have the ground support they once did on this issue. Of course, the insurance companies are also not going to go down without a hell of a fight and I think it's going to take a long time before we can declare who wins and who loses.

You are correct. I've been saying for years that we won't get health care for every American until corporations want it to protect their profits. It sure won't happen as a result of concern about their employees.

The insurance industry will fight to the death to avoid having to provide care to people with pre-existing conditions.

The hospital industry will fight it because they fear being turned into non-profit hospitals similar to the charity hospitals.

It's all about money, not caring for the health care of citizens.

BBB

I wonder if the insurance companies are too big to fail?

Actually, this is a huge part of the problem. I hate health insurance companies but they employee a lot of people in this country. How do you create a transition that doesn't pull the employment rug out from under the industry? I don't have the answer. However, the thought of greedy companies like Aetna going belly-up makes me very happy. They deserve the same consideration they have given to thousands of their customers who they denied or delayed crucial treatment in the hope that the patient would just drop dead and stop bothering them with pesky claims.

I hear you. And really, I don't care if the insuance companies go out of business.

It just I heard a lot about how we needed to save the big 3 (who I also think should have gone under) because they're too big to fail, I was just curious (actually, I knew the answer) if that applied to every giant corporation or just the ones who give to Democrats (and actually, it's just the UAW who gives to Democrats).

There shouldn't be companies who are too big to fail in this country. The possibility of failure is at the core of what makes our country great. It's what drives innovation and success.

I think the bailouts of the big 3 and the banks would be happening no matter which party was in charge. It's easy to be nay sayers if you're not the team in the hot seat. The GOP would never abandon companies like GM and Ford. Those corporations gave plenty to get Bush elected know he would not side with the unions. Bush tinkered with nationalizing the banks and bailing out floundering corporations because it's the accepted "cure" for this type of disaster. The belief among most experts is we need to keep the leaky ships afloat or they will sink to the bottom and drag the rest of the fleet with them. It would take decades for this country to rebuild if all these core companies disappear. It would be like Europe after WWII. It might make me happy because I have socialist leanings and believe capitalism's fatal flaw is that it only works when there is endless growth. I believe in building a sustainable economy based on more economic equality.

Economies are webs. What effects the top eventually effects the bottom. I don't know about you. but although I no longer work on Wall St many of my customers do. I have lost two of my biggest accounts with the downfall of Bear Sterns. They will not be easily replaced. Because I will not be counting on that income this year I have decided not to hire a carpenter to do some work for me. When I told him I wanted to delay our project he mentioned he had a few cancellations and that he decided not to buy a new pickup. The local owner of the Toyota dealership is also a customer of mine. I probably will not be seeing him either anytime soon and so it goes...