Partial Meme Abortion

by digby

Ezra demolishes the laughable new “health care” plan that Bush reportedly plans to unveil tonight, so nobody has to spend any time even thinking about whether it might be worth meeting him “halfway” (so that he can pull the ball away, anyway.)

I’m not a health care expert, so I take the word of trustworthy wonks like Ezra about the feasibility of the plan. But I have been observing politics for a while and there is something to be said about how this pitch is going to be structured and how it will affect the upcoming health care debate.

First, Bush and the Republicans are setting up a new meme, which is that the reason that American health care is so costly is not because insurance companies are spending lots of unnecessary money on administrative costs and advertising or that the uninsured are treated late in the most expensive way possible (emergency rooms.) The reason health care costs are so high is because spoiled people are overusing the system.

This is really to say that we must save the poor put-upon insurance companies from having to pay claims to your co-worker and neighbor who goes to the doctor all the time because it’s costing you money and maybe even your own healthcare. They are planning to divide Americans along lines of healthy and sick, young and old, those with good plans and those with bad ones. If nothing else it muddies the waters nicely for the insurance industry.

I don’t know if it will work, but it’s not a bad opening salvo. They need to break through the idea that the insurance companies are bad guys and sell one that the answer to the health care crisis does not lie with some form of universal coverage. They have to offer a rationale for opposing real reform. This is a first step. The plan has no chance of being enacted and they know this. They just want to start putting down some markers to derail anything significant.

We’ll have more clues about what they have in mind when we see what kind of bullspin they put on it tonight and tomorrow.

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