Flashback: Why Republicans are So Intent on Killing Health Care Reform

[ProSense]

Why Republicans are So Intent on Killing Health Care Reform

by Richard Kirsch

It’s not just about expanded care. It’s about proving our government can be a force for the common good.

Why are John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Mitch McConnell so intent on stopping health care reform from ever taking hold? For the same reason that Republicans and the corporate Right spent more than $200 million in the last year to demonize health care in swing Congressional districts. It wasn’t just about trying to stop the bill from becoming law or taking over Congress. It is because health reform, if it takes hold, will create a bond between the American people and government, just as Social Security and Medicare have done. Democrats, and all those who believe that government has a positive place in our lives, should remember how much is at stake as Republicans and corporate elites try to use their electoral victory to dismantle the new health care law.

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There’s nothing new here. Throughout American history, health care reform has been attacked as socialist. An editorial published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in December 1932, just after FDR’s election, claimed that proposals for compulsory insurance “were socialism and communism — inciting to revolution.” The PR firm that the American Medical Association hired to fight Truman’s push for national health insurance succeeded in popularizing a completely concocted quote that it attributed to Vladimir Lenin: “Socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the Socialist State.”

In 1961, Ronald Reagan made an LP recording for an AMA front group called Operation Coffeecup entitled “Ronald Reagan speaks out against SOCIALIZED MEDICINE,” in which the future President says that Medicare will be the foot in the door to a totalitarian takeover. Almost half a century later, Sarah Palin quoted Reagan’s words during her speech accepting the Republican nomination for Vice-President.

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The Right has always understood how high the American view of the role of government would be lifted if people came to rely on government for something as essential to a person’s well-being as health care. This year, the animus that the Right maintains toward the New Deal and Great Society programs and philosophy — Social Security, Medicare, the constitution allowing the federal public to regulate commerce — has become visible in the Tea Party movement. The last thing that the corporate and ideological Right want is for health care to be a new pillar added to the foundation of government social insurance.

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This law will do that, and that's why Republicans are afraid.

[ProudDad]

1. Irrelevant...

It was your friends that fucked it up...

From Obama's sell-out before the bill was even introduced...

To the dem's watering it down...

To Obama's final capitulation...

To the Dem's mealy mouthed excuses for ignoring what over 70 percent of USAmericans WANTED!!!

Fail!!!

[ProSense]

4. Not irrelevant. n/t

[rury]

5. ProudDad, you should be ashamed of your post

it is an irrelevant fail...an EPIC fail!!:nopity:

[rasputin1952]

6. Apparently, you do not understand incrementalism...

I'm not trying to be facetious, but throughout your entire life you have seen major legislation passed and then worked on to better it. Before you were born, the Constitution was Amended to ensure that blacks could be citizens, which gave males the right to vote after the Civil War, it was amended again to ensure the law was clear. Later, we had Civil Rights legislation to address the shortcomings of previous legislation. One of the most astounding things about this nation is that it was not until 1920 when women could finally vote nationally...until then, some 51% of the nation could not vote, it came incrementally...(and far too late).

Every piece of legislation that any nation rammed through without taking it in steps has resulted in disaster...especially when it made a major societal change. When DADT, for instance, came about under Clinton, it was a start, but only by rescinding that law did the nation truly move forward on Equal Rights for a segment of our population. The repeal of DADT will be used as a springboard for gays and lesbians to eventually marry, it is a major societal change, so it will come about incrementally, just as Civil Rights for blacks and others came about.

Is there more work to be done? Of course there is, we'll get there, but it will be in steps; some small, some large, but eventually we will see Equal Rights for everyone in this nation.

[stevenleser]

7. Much nicer than how I would have put it. Well done. n/t

[rasputin1952]

8. Thank you...

:hi:

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[derby378]

3. The only bond that will be forged...

...is the shackles chaining the average working American to the fire hydrant of Big Insurance, and when that sucker gets turned on full blast, Mr. and Ms. America will be drenched with bureaucracy and unable to slip the bond.