Right-Wing Says No To Healthcare Reform

Major and minor elements of the kooky, right-wing propaganda ministry-from Rush Limbaugh to The Oklahoman—are goose-stepping to a predictable march song of lies, distortions and fear mongering when it comes to healthcare reform.

The stagnant, right-wing message: Keep things just as they are when it comes to healthcare because the current system rewards big business. Corporate welfare, as we all know by now, is a basic tenet of the GOP platform.

Let’s look at three right-wing myths about healthcare:

(1) “You will have to go into a government healthcare program.” No, under current healthcare reform plans circulating in the U.S. Congress, no one with health insurance will have to change plans. You will have a choice. President Barack Obama and top Democratic leaders in favor of reform have repeatedly said this.

(2) “Insurance companies will not be able to compete with a government-run insurance option.” That’s an absurd claim. If health insurance companies can’t compete, then government is obviously the answer here, not insurance companies. The right-wingers haven’t produced any type of convincing argument or study showing how, say, a government insurance program would run Blue Cross Blue Shield out of business. It’s all disingenuous rhetoric.

(3) “The public option will lead to a single payer system like England’s or Canada’s healthcare plan and that would be terrible.” No, the public option in terms of insurance choice is self-sustaining. It would pay for itself. It’s simply an option. The slippery slope argument is terrible unconvincing in this case. Also, both Canada and England and other single payer systems spend less on healthcare than the U.S., and they have better medical outcomes.

As usual, the corporate media, facing a major financial decline because of its own stagnation, continues to report the misleading right-wing rhetoric as a serious argument or one part of a debate about healthcare without exposing the influence of the health insurance company lobby and its connection to political officials.

The only real argument is how to pay for other parts of the healthcare reform program besides the public insurance option. But even there the corporate media reports the argument with the foregone conclusion that any type of tax hike on the country’s wealthiest citizens is terribly controversial. Why? Under former President George Bush and a Republican-controlled Congress, the wealthiest people in the country saw a dramatic rise in their incomes while salaries for everyone else remained stagnant.

Here’s Rush Limbaugh on healthcare reform:

Well, isn't this good? Get ready to get gang-raped again, folks. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she will not give the public a week to review the final text of a health care reform bill before it's voted on later this year. . . .Hugo Chavez ain't got anything on us. The way this -- this is the most leftward, radical leftist House of Representatives this nation has ever elected and they are behaving as total statist autocrats."

Here’s The Oklahoman on healthcare reform:

As it is, the legislation is a big-government liberal’s health care dream come true.

There’s a public insurance option, which a number of experts believe will crowd out private insurance over time, slowly taking the United States to a "single-payer” system run by Washington.

It would bar private insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, and it would be funded by soaking a small group of Americans, judged able to pay because of their income level.

Note all the rhetoric about Hugo Chavez, “radical leftist,” “big-government liberal’s health care dream come true” and “soaking a small group of Americans.”

The right-wingers rely on emotional appeals to manipulate people because they can’t rationally argue against healthcare reform or a public option without contradicting themselves. The corporate media then reports these emotional appeals as SERIOUS DEBATE. It’s not. It’s the pathetic, dying gasps of a failed ideology and a misguided political party in major decline.

Is real reform impossible because of Republicans, conservative Congressional Democrats, and the supermajority that’s needed to pass any legislation in the U.S. Senate these days? Maybe so, even though a vast majority of Americans want reform. It may well take until after the 2010 elections to pass any real reform as Democrats increase their numbers in Congress because of GOP obstructionism.