Ugh
Everyone should read Ezra Klein’s interview with Sen. Lindsay Graham. It’s good, and it should briefly give you hope that maybe there’s room for some kind of health care reform that actually makes sense and where bi-partisan compromise means “making the bill better” rather than simply making it less ambitious. Then read this retort at firedoglake, which will immediately deflate any optimism whatseover you may have gotten after reading the Graham interview. Seriously – was this guy even reading the same interview as me?
One additional thing: Although Graham gives a clear “Yes”to the question of whether he’d vote for Wyden-Bennett, he also gives Klein a legitimate source for the proposition that other co-sponsors of Wyden-Bennett would not vote for it.
Regarding our discussion a while back, I’d say this quote from Graham is pretty telling: “Republicans will give in to the idea that every American should have coverage, and it should be mandated. There’s resistance to that because it runs counter to some of the doctrine.”Report
what part of the retort don’t you agree with. Graham says that a public option will kill private insurance. The retort at FDL points out public options in other areas hasn’t killed private business. The argument that a public option will kill private insurance is still flawed. It essentially says the public option will be to popular and cheaper so we can’t have it. To popular and cheaper is not a reason to avoid to doing something, in fact it sounds sort of good.
And Graham is wrong about people not caring about cost, since as pointed out, plenty of people avoid treatment because they don’t have the money. Also comparison shopping for medical treatment is a bit different then a car. Also it has been the R’s who have fought funding for comparative effectiveness research. Somehow getting all sciency to find out which treatments work best is something the R’s are against in the current bills. Doesn’t that seem to run counter to Graham’s desire to want people to make educated , cost based choices.
As Dan notes, Graham thinks just saying everybody should have insurance is some kind of massive concession. Gee what a major concession, i think the old phrase,”that is mighty white of you” applies. How that must burn for Graham, everybody having insurance. Does everybody having a public education twist his panties. But somehow he is fine with medicare.Report
Graham immediately retracted the bit about car buying in the very next question, which the firedoglake poster utterly fails to note. Moreover, the firedoglake poster utterly misrepresents Graham’s point with respect to the cost issue: that point is clearly and specifically dealing with the problems of people who already have insurance and how that artifically inflates demand for health care (and thus costs for the uninsured). He’s specifically speaking, in other words, about how our employer-based system screws things up royally – yet the firedoglake poster uses it to falsely claim that Graham is out of touch with the problem of the uninsured.
There’s also more to Graham’s criticism of the public option than the firedoglake poster gives credit for, although it’s certainly debatable, but the big problem I have is that he is completely misrepresenting the point of the vast majority of what Klein and Graham are discussing. I don’t understand for a second how someone can read the Graham interview and just dismiss him as speaking from a “sense of entitlement” and implicitly unserious about getting any kind of significant reform pushed through. It’s the dismissiveness that frustrates me.Report
Whatever, Mark.Report
I imagine the poster making a “W” with his two hands as he says “whatever”.
This makes the response much, much more scathing, in my mind.Report
Graham knows the government is better at providing health insurance than the private sector…And so he’s opposed to it. He tries to make it seem like Medicare is heading for disaster, but doesn’t address the $32 trillion unfunded Medicare Part D liability that he voted for. And didn’t bother to fund.
He’s throwing the same bogeymen out there as usual – the government will ration care, long live the free market! And he makes some minor concessions towards a rational solution and we’re supposed to get excited? No Sale!Report
Mark:
You’re kidding, right? Why would you read this flat non-negotiable demand at the top of Graham’s heaping pile of bullshit and feel “optimistic”?
I haven’t even yet read the retort you find so dispiriting, but I can tell you right now it doesn’t go far enough.Report
Graham is for a mandate but against a public option. For Medicare (with an !), but not for me. For Wyden-Bennett for for real, but also for others being for it for political cover! “That’s a good thing,” he says!
Nothing much here for me to like. Also, the fdl person is right — people most certainly do ask about cost — people without coverage and with bad coverage, and usually by just not bothering with doctors (or dentists). It looked to me that the firedoglake person was just picking out segments he had a strong reaction to, not purporting to fairly represent the entire interview — that’s what links are for.Report