Update #3 11/25/08: Great diary at Daily Kos by Jason Rosenbaum giving some background on why the right wants to kill health care reform. It is as I have said.
Update #2 11/23/08: Huffington Post now has the ball, citing the Daily Kos and Cato, and including a new analysis published today by US News.
Update: I was not aware of this post, but even the Cato Institute's people make the same analysis, even though they think it would be bad, evil socialism.
It is almost a truism in public policy that programs that are merit-based, like welfare, are vulnerable to being reduced. On the other hand, programs that are universal, like Social Security, are extremely popular. Once you get them, and they start benefiting you, you can’t imagine what life was like without it.
Now imagine the remaining geographic enclave of the conservative base, Appalachia. What would it mean to those rural folk to get good, universal, and cheap, health care? To be able to take their sick parents or children for care that might save their lives? It would be the end of the fear of progressive politics. Like the threats of the slippery slope of socialism that Wall Street and big business voiced during the enacting of the New Deal, when FDR enacted socialist legislation like unemployment insurance, child-labor laws, minimum wage laws, and overtime pay, the propaganda warning us against state-run health care will be forgotten. The Republican Party will gain the reputation as the party that kept the poor folk of the hollows of Appalachia from being able to see a doctor.
That’s why the Republican Party will fight like hell to keep universal health care from being enacted, not because they think it will not work, but because they know that it will.
Now just imagine if they had good schools!
Now imagine the remaining geographic enclave of the conservative base, Appalachia. What would it mean to those rural folk to get good, universal, and cheap, health care? To be able to take their sick parents or children for care that might save their lives? It would be the end of the fear of progressive politics. Like the threats of the slippery slope of socialism that Wall Street and big business voiced during the enacting of the New Deal, when FDR enacted socialist legislation like unemployment insurance, child-labor laws, minimum wage laws, and overtime pay, the propaganda warning us against state-run health care will be forgotten. The Republican Party will gain the reputation as the party that kept the poor folk of the hollows of Appalachia from being able to see a doctor.
That’s why the Republican Party will fight like hell to keep universal health care from being enacted, not because they think it will not work, but because they know that it will.
Now just imagine if they had good schools!
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