Joe Conason: The GOP’s Big Health Scare

[marmar]

from Truthdig:


The GOP’s Big Health Scare


Posted on Aug 8, 2007
By Joe Conason

Listening to the Republican candidates for president warn against “socialized medicine,” you might believe that national health insurance is really a plot to institute Soviet rule in the United States. The most feverish rhetoric comes from Mitt Romney and Rudolph Giuliani, both hoping that their shrillness will prove that they are truly and deeply right-wing—all while trying to avoid honest debate about the future of American healthcare.

For Romney, health reform is double-edged: As the former governor of Massachusetts, he claims credit for that state’s new universal care program—which he calls “fabulous”—but he fears being labeled liberal. His solution is simply to ignore the basic provisions of the legislation that he signed. “This is a country that can get all of our people insured with not a government takeover, without HillaryCare, without socialized medicine,” he proclaimed during a Republican debate this past spring. “We didn’t expand government programs.”

Actually, his fabulous Bay State plan is based entirely on governmental action, from mandating insurance coverage and minimum-coverage requirements to subsidizing insurance and imposing fines on those who fail to comply.

Perhaps Romney needs medical attention himself, since he already seems to be suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. This isn’t the first time his capacity to recall facts about his own career has dimmed out.

As for Giuliani, he, too, sees the frightening specter of foreign ideology in proposals for universal healthcare, which he denounced the other day as “socialist” schemes that “would bankrupt the government.” According to him, Democrats are conspiring to impose the kind of care preferred by citizens across the industrialized world. “That is where Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are taking you,” he thundered. “You have got to see the trap. Otherwise we are in for a disaster. We are in for Canadian healthcare, French healthcare, British healthcare.” ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070808_the_gops_big_health_scare/