Joe Conason chronicles why the GOP candidates are whistling past the graveyard on health care.
Although the red threat still triggers an autonomic reaction among GOP true believers, the rest of the country no longer twitches to that high-pitched, far-right whistle. Most polls not only show enormous majorities favoring extension of coverage to every child, but substantial support for a radical change in how we pay and administer health insurance—including the possibility of a single-payer system.
Why doesn’t the traditional propaganda work any more? Perhaps the demise of the Soviet Union and the withering of communism in China have had a delayed effect on public attitudes here. Both the Russians and the Chinese have turned more capitalist than the West, abandoning their former systems without substituting modern protections. The ex-Communists are more of a threat to the health of their own societies than to us. Most Americans may also have noticed that corporate bureaucracy and corruption, which figure largely in the present health care system, are not preferable to government bureaucracy. Doctors who used to wail about the dangers of Medicare have learned how unpleasant it is to deal with dozens of insurance companies, each creating different rules to cut costs and deny care. So have their patients.
All this shrieking about creeping socialism can’t die too soon for me. It flabbergasts me at how irrational some people still behave at the thought of a government social program actually benefiting the population that supports it, all because they think it will mean the commies breaking down their doors tomorrow.
Pants-shitting morons, every one of them.
I’m commenting to defend Cap’s honor. The character in the comic excerpt above is not Captain America. It’s the Captain America of the 1950’s – a red-baiter, whom, it turns out, was a totally different guy, and whose Super Soldier experiment wasn’t done right and made him go nuts.
Just felt the need to clear that up.
Now that the Soviet Union is gone, right-wingers can expound on their love for Joe Stalin.
I just think it’s weird that conservatives are more scared of a government that taxes rich people than they are of a government that can declare them enemy combatants and torture them at will.
Iggy beat me to it, but he’s right. That’s not the real Captain America. He’s more the Rush Limbaugh version — a phony patriot wrapping himself in the flag.
The real Cap’s costume have red and white stripes that vertically run around his torso. The fake Cap has no stripes in the back.
If you watch the SCHIP debate, “socialism” is their foil for disguising their motivation of taking from the poor and giving to the rich. That’s the root of every policy they support. I agree with Dr. Vic. “Big government” to them isn’t the government that tortures its own citizens, spies on them without oversight or warrants, or detains us indefinitely without trial or charges. “Big government” taxes the rich for their fair share and takes care of poor people. And that just will not do.
A TURD BY ANY OTHER NAME
A One Act Play
AD 2012 – The Magickal Land of HillaryCare
Former socialist idiot: Doctors say I need this operation! And soon!
Post Office Quality Doctor: You’ll get it if we can budget for it…in about a year.
Soon-to-be dead socialist idiot: A YEAR? I don’t have 6 months!
Post Office Quality Doctor: (laconically tapping keyboard) Hey, that’s great…look at that, it’s lunchtime.
Love the one act play, Woliver, except for the fact that it misses the point. How many people have to use emergency rooms for their primary care since they’re uncovered in this nation? How many who are covered get denied compensation by the “for profit” industry? How many other countries pay less money for better care? The system’s broken, and we have to fix it. Either help or get out of the way. Any time you want an actual conversation, Woliver…
Also, the top tax rate under Eisenhower, what Rockefeller paid in income taxes? 91%. Under Bill Clinton? 39%
Food for thought about who’s a “socialist,” isn’t it?
This is why right-wingers shouldn’t do satire. First of all, Hillary’s health plan is NOT single-payer universal health care. Which right-wingers don’t know and don’t seem to care. The truth interferes with your “beliefs.”
Her plan is a mandated requirement for health insurance that puts the burden on the individuals, with some assistance for lower income families.
Second, even if it were the universal health care we all want, you don’t actually have to make up a hypothetical situation in which your imaginary doctor and patient interact. We can base it on reality (not a Republican forte, I realize) called “every other health care system in the industrialized world.”
And guess what? They all pay less, live longer, live healthier, and are generally happier with their system than we are with ours.
So as satire, Woliver, your post fails miserably. Please leave it to the pros, or at least people with some grasp of reality.
Woliver’s “play” is an accurate depiction of what socialized medicine is like in countries like Canada and France. That’s why we have to secure our borders from the hordes of Canadians and French people who wish to sneak into our country and take advantage of our superior health care system that charges absurd premiums to keep you partially covered.
Also, all doctors get into medicine for the money. It has nothing to do with a desire to provide health care.
A new Woliverplay pretending other socialized systems in America were privatized like our health care:
Caller: My house is on fire!!
FireStation Response Center: Insurance number.
Caller: Hurry, my kids are inside!
FireStation Response Center: Insurance number.
Caller: I don’t know offhand.
FireStation Response Center: last Name and social security number.
Caller: Wilson. 111-11-1111, oh fuck this my kids are dying. [phone drops, sound of man running into burning building]
Firestation Response Center: …I’ve looked up your policy and it is current, help is on the way. Please have a credit card or cash ready for your $500 co-pay.
Six months later. Wilson receives a bill for $12,000 because the insurance company retroactively cancelled his policy when investigators dug up that Wilson failed to disclose that he smoked a cigarette in 1985.
Look. I actually am a socialist, okay? I support the traditional Labour party. I believe in things like nationalisation and trade unionism. I’ve read The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and I listen to Billy Bragg. I’m the traditional British left-winger.
Therefore, it really annoys me when people call someone like Hillary Clinton a socialist, particularly as if “socialism” were some terrifying bogeyman akin to “fascism” or, more to the point, “communism”.
Socialism means Communism here, Nimrod. It’s a cultural thing. Not a defensible or intelligent cultural thing, but it is real. And it persists despite the many actual socialists we commonly admire, like Woody Guthrie, Helen Keller (on the Alabama quarter, I believe), Einstein, and Martin Luther King (not to mention Jesus). When we get universal health care, it will be in no small part because of the successful examples of systems in Europe, so I thank you in advance for your experiments. And however you managed to avoid going down that road to serfdom, I’ll never know!
The thing to remember especially is that one party in this country is rooted in the South, where white people have an especially strong terror of the government giving money to PEOPLE WHO DON’T DESERVE IT. This fear is so strong, it trumps their fear of a government with the power to torture people, or of a government that repeals habeas corpus, or one that lies the nation into a pointless, costly wars.
The other thing to remember is that our country is much, much more unequal than yours. We have literally 1% of the country absorbing 21% of the income. So naturally, the main job of the elitist party is to protect and expand that 1%’s interests — usually accomplished by distracting people with cultural issues and lying about their actual economic policy agenda. So there’s a lot of ignorance that’s deliberately generated by the right about the alternatives to that regressive economic policy.
It’s a sad state of affairs, but ultimately if we become a more equal society, with a larger middle class that’s less exposed to catastrophic risk (aka not George Bush’s “ownership society”) then what does it matter what it’s called?
The sad thing is, I actually remember reading one Captain America comic where he and Falcon get their butts saved by a conscientious objector–it was either during the Vietnam War or just after.
Then again, maybe only Captain America could have feature a CO as the day-saver.