Health Reform Makes US More Like Europe - Thank Goodness

By Richard Cohen, March 22nd, 2010 - Real Clear Politics

Mitch McConnell is right. The Republican Senate leader, a man whose vision is to deny others theirs, told The New York Times that President Obama's health care proposal was part of an attempt to "turn us into a Western European country," which, the good Lord willing, is what will now happen. I, for one, could use a dash of Germany, where there are something like 200 private health insurance plans and where everyone is covered and no one goes broke on account of bad health. It's great to be healthy in America, but for too many Americans, it's better to be sick somewhere else.

I would also take France or Switzerland, but mostly I'd like Japan, which I move to Western Europe for the sake of argument, and where medical care is as good (or better) than it is here and much less expensive. What all these countries have in common is the recognition that health care is, like food or education, a universal right. The United States, to McConnell's evident chagrin, is now moving this way.

Do not underestimate the importance of Sunday's House vote. It was momentous and it will not be repealed by the results of the November elections. Against the hopes and insistence of the GOP, America did not reverse Social Security (as late as the Eisenhower administration, that was the fervent wish of the party's right wing) or Medicaid. The worth of these programs became evident and thus politically sacrosanct. When Americans figure out that insurance companies can no longer deny them coverage because, as it happens, they urgently need it, and when they discover that their kids can remain covered until age 26 and when they can for the first time afford health insurance themselves, this law will become untouchable.

Self-interest usually trumps ideology.

This battle was never entirely about health care. The fury of the opposition -- not a single Republican vote -- is as historically significant as the passage of the legislation itself. There is something cleaving this country, something represented by the election of Barack Obama -- the very change he either promised or threatened, take your pick -- and the hyper-exaggeration of the ideological threat the man represented. Caricatured as a socialist, a radical, a hard-left liberal and even an alien, he is actually the very soul of center-left moderation, cautious to a fault.

It is the same with the health care package itself. Whatever it is, it is not socialism. For all the fulminations about the American free enterprise system, private insurance companies are retained. The government will not do what governments all over the world do -- provide either health insurance or health care itself. Does the legislation provide for a government role? Yes. But there is a government role in virtually everything -- or haven't you noticed the tag on your pillow?

The reason this fight took so long is that the culture is about evenly divided. It's not that the political system is broken. On the contrary, it's not supposed to work without consensus. It did as designed -- marched in place and bided its time until Sunday it moved just a bit. Consider how long it has taken. Harry Truman wanted this bill.

Anger comes from fear. What was once a white Protestant nation is changing hue and religion. It is no accident that racial epithets were yelled at black lawmakers on Saturday in Washington and a kind of venom even gets exclaimed from the floor of the Congress: "You lie!" "Baby killer!" The protesters were protesting health care legislation. But they feared they were losing their country.

Ever since the New Deal, the GOP has been the Party of The Past. It said no to the New Deal. It said no to Social Security. Important leaders -- Barry Goldwater, for instance -- said no to civil rights as they now are saying no to gay rights. The party plays the role of the scold, the finger-wagger who warns of this or that dire outcome -- not all of it wrong -- and then gets bypassed by progress. The GOP then picks itself up and resumes its fight against the next innovation. Usually, it wins some battles; usually, it loses the war.

McConnell had his point. Europe is way ahead of us [the US] in compassion for the sick. Its systems, though, are hardly perfect and government debt is always a concern. Still, we now know which way we are going. The culture wars will continue, but the outcome, Mitch, is no longer in doubt.

cohenr@washpost.com

Health Reform Makes US More Like Europe - Thank Goodness

The Reagan Myth: finally demolished

Ronald Reagan was never that popular a president, records of opinion polls in a new book reveal.

In reality, issue by issue the majority of Americans were against Reagan policies throughout his presidency. He did receive a bounce after leaving office, but in 1990, in fact a year after leaving office, Americans rated Carter more favourably than Reagan.

Reagan did not reduce the size of government; indeed, the number of people on the federal payroll went up significantly under his leadership, which destroys another Republican/Teabagging group psychosis claim about them being the party of minimal federal government. A myth indeed.

When Reagan took office, middle-income Americans with children paid 8.2% of pay in income taxes + 9.5% in payroll taxes; when Reagan left it was 6.6% and 11.5%. Yes, unless you were rich, your federal tax burden went up, illustrating that Reagan pretty much catered only for his tax-cut-seeking electoral base and not the average American family.

Lifting many restrictions on S&Ls in 1982 was followed by a bailout 7 years later due to losses in high-risk commercial real estate ventures, and then the 2009 prime-mortgage fiasco. Proof that new Republican dogs cannot learn old tricks.

Manufacturing jobs declined under Reagan by an estimated 300,000 - 1.8 million, the US became the world's greatest debtor nation (a habit, policy and national trend continued under both Bushs), wealth inequality began its great upward leap, and the middle-class began its decades of real-income stagnation.

At the time that it happened, Americans did not credit Reagan with the fall of the Berlin Wall. A USA Today poll 4 days after the fall of the Berlin Wall (in 1989) gave 43% of the credit to Gorbachev, and 14% to Reagan; the figures were 70% and 2% among Germans.

In 1985, Reagan ruled out a military response to a Beirut hijacking for fear of civilian casualties; Lou Cannon reported then in the Washington Post that Reagan called retaliation in which innocent civilians are killed “itself a terrorist act": something which didn't stop him bombing Libya and, err... killing civilians.

The Reagan administration was completely against trying terrorists in military tribunals. Paul Bremer (yes, that Paul Bremer) said in 1987, “a major element of our strategy has been to delegitimize terrorists, to get society to see them for what they are — criminals — and to use democracy’s most potent tool, the rule of law, against them.” Bizarre, then, that Bremer was GW Bush's man on the ground in Iraq in the 'War on Terrorism' (not that Iraq ever threatened the US in any manifest way, nor did his time there see Bremer wish to stick by his own words when ferrying suspects over to military tribunals at Gitmo, instead of insisting that they be tried in civil courts - you know, "to use democracy's most potent tool" to prove that the rule of law works...)

I still can't figure out whether that's breathtaking hypocrisy or epoch-redefining irony? Probably both.

Finally, nowadays, whereas any self-respecting Republican, or at least those now scrabbling to be cast in the Reaganite mould (and they are legion), routinely claim to be a deficit-busting 'fiscal conservative', a term rapidly becoming a devalued currency for its claimants, interesting then that, according to former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, former Vice President Cheney claimed during a cabinet meeting that “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.” Which prompts the question: then why do these self-same people bitch and whine non-stop about "the deficit", whilst seeking, feloniously, to paint the deficit as something which is Obama's fault, when he wasn't even in power during the previous eight Bush years which actually created it? Indeed, hypocrisy aside, as Will Bunch points out in the his Harper's interview:

'I would argue that there are parallels between Reagan and Obama, in the sense that both presidents came into power during economic crises and both cut taxes and increased spending in their first year, leading to higher deficits. The one difference—and it’s an important one—is that Reagan’s increased spending was for the relatively wasteful area of defense (although it did lead to some job creation) while Obama is making an attempt to target more useful areas, such as infrastructure and alternative energy. The bottom line on Reaganomics is pretty bleak. Yearly deficits soared, and the overall national debt nearly tripled, from $930 billion to about $2.7 trillion, according to the Washington Post.'

For those who'd like a comparison with another runaway-deficit-creating Republican president, here are the figures on GW Bush's presidency: Closing The Book On The Bush Legacy - and they do not make pleasant reading for Americans.

The Reagan Myth: finally demolished