Attacks on Medicare: Desperate Attempt to Gut Health Care Reform
This might come as a shock to the 44 million Americans who receive their health care coverage through Medicare, but according to two Republican House members, Medicare has “never done anything to make people more healthy,” and it has had the biggest “negative effect” on health care than anything else in the past 44 years.
Step back from Medicare’s 44th birthday cake (click [1] here for more on the program’s four-decades-plus success) and let that gibberish from two of the charter members of the “let’s-kill-health care reform” caucus sink in. (While we’re doing that, a tip of the hat to Jason Rosenbaum at Health Care for America Now! (HCAN) for [2] exposing this nonsense).
You can draw two conclusions. First, Reps. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and Tom Price (R-Ga.) are just plain out of touch with reality.
Second, these attacks on Medicare represent a ramping up of Republican attacks on [3] health care reform—a public plan option in a particular. Although it’s hard to believe it could get [4] much shriller.
After all, Medicare is a public health plan and if they can paint the nation’s most successful public health insurance initiative as a dangerous failure, perhaps they can sow enough fear to turn the public against reform efforts that includes government involvement.
On second thought, if they really think they can turn around the [5] 84 percent of the respondents in a recent poll that rated Medicare good to excellent or the [5] 72 percent who told a CBS/New York Times poll they would support a public plan option if it were “similar to Medicare,” maybe they are a little delusional.
Article printed from AFL-CIO NOW BLOG: http://blog.aflcio.org
URL to article: http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/07/31/attacks-on-medicare-desperate-attempt-to-gut-health-care-reform/
URLs in this post:
[1] here: http://blog.aflcio.org../../../../../2009/07/30/medicare-turns-44-seniors-push-for-health-care-refor
m/
[2] exposing this nonsense: http://blog.healthcareforamericanow.org/2009/07/30/republicans-picking-up-the-blunt-line-medicare-is
-bad-so-no-public-option/
[3] health care reform: http://www.aflcio.org/issues/healthcare/fix.cfm
[4] much shriller: http://blog.aflcio.org../../../../../2009/07/29/fox-news-insurance-industry-say-theres-no-health-car
e-crisis-yeah-right/
[5] 84 percent: http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/mp_20090629_2600.php
No comments:
Post a Comment