Steny And Luntzy

by digby

So Frank Luntz is out with the approved talking points for the Republicans to tank health care reform. It is the usual Orwellian mishmash in which the insurance company whores (er .. Republicans) will threaten people with rationing and long waits, basically telling them that universal health care is going to kill them all in their beds. It’s kind of like Islamic terrorism, except without the head scarves.

Here are some suggested arguments for Republicans that Luntz calls “clear winners”:

—“It could lead to the government setting standards of care, instead of doctors who really know what’s best.”

—“It could lead to the government rationing care, making people stand in line and denying treatment like they do in other countries with national healthcare.”

-“President Obama wants to put the Washington bureaucrats in charge of healthcare. I want to put the medical professionals in charge, and I want patients as an equal partner.”

The usual.

The more interesting thing to me is the people who will be helping him with his little project:

eHouse Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (MD) delivered the keynote address at a Bipartisan Policy Center forum, “Unprecedented Federal Debt: Putting Our Fiscal House in Order,” hosted by former Senator Pete Domenici at the St. Regis Hotel. Below are his remarks as prepared for delivery:

“If I were to guess the single most lasting lesson of our economic crisis, and if I were to spell it out in just five words, I would say: this is what debt does.

“The recklessness we have seen from so many consumers, and from Wall Street, found an echo in the recklessness of the federal government. For years, our government has lived far beyond its means—and we see now that when we over-rely on debt, things can turn very ugly, very quickly. If a fiscal meltdown comes, there will be no one to bail out America.

[…]

“Our third response is, by far, the most important. That is the structural response—the actions we must take to confront the imbalance between our commitments and our revenues that are driving us deeper into debt every year. We will not bring our debt down if we do not reform entitlements and rein in the rapidly rising cost of health care.

“I am glad that we have a President who sees it that way. His talk of a ‘grand bargain’ that encompasses issues from entitlements to health care to taxes shows a clear understanding of the tradeoffs and sacrifices that will be necessary. Given the gravity of our situation, we cannot afford to take any options off of the table, either on the spending or the revenue side.

He reiterates his belief that we have to cut social security and believes that this will be an easy fix because Obama allegedly agrees with him. He says that health care will be hard because people are going to have to make big choices:

“We have pledged that, in the health care reform bill we will debate this session, we will pay for expanded access, so that health care reform does not add to the short-term deficit. But that is not enough. It is imperative that we slow the growth of health care spending over the long term. It’s important to remember that the American health care system is the most expensive per-capita in the world, and, compared to the rest of the developed world, it is not buying us better health.

“The health care debate must be about both controlling costs and expanding access. In fact, a focus on controlling costs is what will help us pass health care reform. But while expanded access will on its own help reduce unnecessary expenses, it isn’t a magic bullet for controlling costs; other options for doing so include electronic medical records and comparative effectiveness research. But reforming health care will also take many more long-term choices. Discussing the problem is important—but what we need from you even more is your willingness to actively support those who are willing to make those tough choices.

Now, it’s certainly true that containing costs is a major part of health care reform. But if Steny thinks that’s what the debate should be about, then he and Frank Luntz are obviously working hand in glove to ensure that it doesn’t pass. Luntz wants to scare people into thinking they’ll lose what meager coverage they have, if they are lucky to have it at all. And Hoyer wants to tell everyone they are going to have to “reduce unnecessary expenses” and make some tough “choices.” It’s hard for me to see how they aren’t on the same page. It’s certainly hard to see how that’s going to sell any kind of universal health care — they’re both saying that the cure is worse than the disease.

If the Democrats follow Hoyer on this, we can only conclude they aren’t serious about reforming health care at all. If the debate focuses on containing costs and reining in unnecessary spending (translation: rationing and long waits) we lose. People aren’t stupid. They figure they’ll end up worse off than they are already and they’d have good reason to think so. From what Hoyer is saying, the government debt is going to be retired by taking it out of the hides of the elderly and the sick, with a good portion of the middle class paying in worse health care than they have now. Why would anyone think that’s a good idea?

That’s why Hoyer and his pals at the Peterson Institute are pushing for a commission. They know that politicians have to answer to actual humans which renders this outrageously stupid plan to cut social security and medicare in the middle of a once in a lifetime economic crisis such a non-starter:

“The political challenges on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are extraordinary. So I think it’s very possible that finding a solution will demand an extraordinary process. Some Members of Congress, including Congressmen Cooper and Wolf, have called for a Fiscal Future Commission—composed of Members of Congress and the Administration, experts outside the government, and those who would be directly affected by entitlement reform—which would propose solutions and send them to Congress for a vote. I think they make a strong case. A Fiscal Future Commission would help protect that process from the political attacks that have derailed it in the past. This is also a function that could be handled by the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, chaired by Paul Volcker.

Paul Volcker certainly knows how to stick it to workers, I’ll give him that. Maybe he can take the same meat axe to the sick and old. Sounds like they’ve got it all worked out.

Hoyer closed with this:

“[B]oth parties must work together in good faith. Bipartisan compromise will build public confidence that the solutions we agree on are reasonable, and it will prevent either party from exploiting those solutions for political advantage. Quite simply, we have to understand one another’s fears—Republican fears that Democrats will merely raise revenues and then spend them on new entitlements, and Democratic fears that reform will undermine the security of those in need and weaken support for popular programs. Those fears are understandable—but they should be outweighed by the fear of what will happen if we fail, if our debts overwhelm us, and if the fiscal meltdown comes. Republicans fear that taxes will go through the roof and think that families and small businesses will suffer. Democrats fear that the programs we value will be slashed, and that those we most want to protect—the weakest, the least powerful—will suffer the most. Compromising now is the only way out of that worst-case scenario.

Apparently, the current economic situation is chopped liver.

Hoyer believes the government should be telling people that unless the government starts cutting social security and ensures that the only health care reform that happens is huge slashing cuts in medicare and medicaid, things are really going to get bad. There is no reasonable economic argument that says this is true, certainly not during a bad economic down turn, but Hoyer and his buddies believe that fear mongering about debt in the middle of a major recession is smart politics. And for them it is, since they seek to confuse and scare people into thinking that draconian cuts in retirement and health benefits (just as many of them have lost a huge chunk of their planned retirement income from falling home prices and the stock market crash) is absolutely necessary.

Hoyer and his fiscal scold pals want to use this crisis to ram through “entitlement” reform. And in order to get that done, they need to tank health care, which they clearly plan to do by reinforcing Republican talking points and fearmongering about sacrifice and cost cutting and making “choices.”

Keep your eye on Hoyer’s Blue Dogs. If they have their way, by the time we’re done, health care reform will be seen by the public to mean the choice between giving up the expensive and unreliable health care you have for standing in long lines to sign up for a heart transplant. They are already teaming up with Frank Luntz to make sure nobody sees health reform as something they would actually want unless they currently have no coverage at all.