Liberals know that if the health care “overhaul” fails, they cannot blame Republicans. Therefore they are already taking shots against their own. While the Blue Dogs halt a bill that goes against their fiscally conservative values, the rest of the party is attacking them for standing in the way of government-run health care.
Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation appeared on “Morning Joe” July 28 to beat up on Blue Dogs and to make a case for immediate action on health care, whatever the cost.
Defending her article in The Nation, “Blue Dogs Not So Centrist,” vanden Heuvel stated: “I say that because … there has been a lot of talk about why the urgency around health care reform? It’s been 55 years since President Truman first laid out the need for
Apparently vanden Heuvel had never heard “haste makes waste” or “only fools rush in.” The Blue Dogs are attempting to halt a rush into a bill that would worsen the health insurance situation in this country and are being labeled as extreme for it.
“And I think it's a defining moment for this country,” vanden Heuvel continued, “Putting aside the partisan politics, I think it’s a defining moment because we are one of the last, only, western industrialized countries that does not have affordable universal health care … Because if we can’t pass universal health care, accessible, affordable, I think it's a question about … is our system functional, can our system work to improve the conditions of people’s lives?”
Unlike vanden Heuvel, most Americans regard being different from Europeans as a point of pride. And it’s worth noting that nobody is lacking health care, just health insurance.
She then went on to make a case for the trademark of ObamaCare: “Just concretely, on the public plan, which will discipline the insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and be key to economic, to cost containment and, I would argue, to economic recovery as part of a larger plan. These Blue Dogs are opposed to that, and it’s against their own interests.”
She fails to recognize that a public plan will not discipline, but rather end private insurance companies by undercutting their pricing. Also, apparently she has ignored the CBO report that says this plan will not cut costs, but rather increase them, and add to the federal deficit. So much for cost containment and economic recovery.
But such facts aren’t an issue for her. When confronted with the CBO’s estimate, vanden Heuvel stated, “I think we need to rethink some of the alarmist and demagogic rhetoric … about the deficit. Let’s think hard. The debt to GDP ratio in this country has been higher before. On the eve of World War II I believe, or right after World War II, it was 109 percent. We came into a period after that of the great compression, when the middle class in this country grew up. I think we need a deficit at this time.” She should be asking whether her great grandchildren need a deficit, because they’re already going to inherit once courtesy of Obamanomics. ObamaCare would only add to it.
“Let us tax the wealthy to make Americans healthy,” she preached, “And I think if you were able to educate people, and we have the educator-in-chief in the White House, if he got out there, that’s how we help fund what this country needs – health care – and not get caught up in conventional deficit, crunching numbers, issues.”
She’s right. Health care “reform” is easier to swallow when you don’t get “caught up in” reality.
When it was pointed out to her that the surtax she and the Democrats proposed would not pay for health care, she retreated to reflexive Marxism “… I believe that it is time that the very wealthy in this country bear their share,” vanden Heuvel said.
Perhaps just to prove that she really was unconcerned by massive deficits, the abridgement of liberty by bureaucrats and all the other effects of expanding government, she remarked that Medicare was “one of the great government programs of this country,” ignoring all the inefficiencies and waste, and the program’s impending bankruptcy.
