Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

The Boy Toy Credo

by digby

I heard Ashton Kutcher on Bill Maher launch into a diatribe that I’ve been hearing a lot recently. Here’s David Horowitz describing it:

Kutcher put forth sensible views and engaging, informed opinions on the issue of health care which brought some consensus to the table.

Discussing the issue of a greater need for an emphasis on promoting wellness instead of just treating sickness, Kutcher expressed a view on socialized medicine that hasn’t been discussed as much as it should:

“Frankly, I don’t want to pay for the guy who’s getting a triple-bypass because he’s eating fast food all day and deep-fried snickers bars. I don’t want to pay for him! Whether he’s wealthy or he’s not!”

He’s right. Should the taxpayer have to pay for other people’s unhealthiness? Should the taxpayer pay for the guy who smokes four packs of cigarettes a day and then gets emphysema?

This isn’t confined to to the far right and arrogantly fatuous celebrities. I was asked the same thing at Drinking Liberally by someone who felt the same way.

Here’s how the freepers put it, as only they can:

It’s not just fat people and smokers – promiscuous gays with AIDS, promiscuous heterosexuals with STDs, drunks injured in car crashes,…the list goes on & on.

Here are my favorite comments, which demonstrate wingnut incoherence on health care perfectly:

We all know that our grandparents visited a doctor only a few times in their whole lives. Allowing the government to take control will send us all down a path where a medtech behind a bullet-proof glass with dictate who is or is not served by the last living doctor in each socialist locality.

And:

“I take as my individual Christian responsibility to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, clothe the naked and care for the sick – and so do a lot of other Americans. It’s called charity.”

we need to do more than charity. We need to push people so that they can sustain themselves so that they won’t have to depend on anyone, private charity or govt.

You see, the problem comes down to liberals wanting to take money from the “good people” to pay for the “bad people” and deny the “good people” health care for themselves. So, we need to go back to a time when nobody saw doctors (and grandma just kicked the bucket at 62 or so, thus relieving anyone of having to make those “end of life” choices.) And we also need to “push” people to stop getting sick or at least push them to become multimillionaires so they can afford to pay for their own health care if the insurance companies decide not to cover them. How this “push” is to be accomplished is anybody’s guess, but I would suppose it has something to do with the second amendment. They are quite sure that the government is going to ration health care, something they obviously believe is a good idea but which should be left up to … them, I guess.

Evidently, these people all believe that if you get sick you either did something to deserve it, in which case you also deserve to go bankrupt even if you have insurance — or, if you are a “good” person, perhaps you can be taken care of by charities, at least until they “push” you out. On their planet, there are no insurance companies denying care to people, no decent hard working Americans losing everything they have to a health crisis, nobody tied to a job they hate because they won’t be able to get insurance if they leave, no CEOs making sickening profits while people suffer, no health care inflation making it impossible for businesses to compete. On their planet it cannot happen to them.

Here’s a “great American” being cheered on for saying he needs nothin’ from nobody and a slavering mob, including a US Congressman, cheering him on:

I am not the type of person to wish that someone would get sick and lose everything they have, but if I were, these are people I would wish it on. It’s a hateful thing to say, but these are hateful people and I’m not going to pretend they aren’t just to be politically correct. Watch the fevered looks on their faces, high fiving and stimulated to near hysteria at the notion that they are completely self-sufficient and need not care for their fellow man. It’s quite clear that they have no empathy at all and therefore must personally experience things in order to understand them. I certainly can’t see much hope of rationally explaining why they themselves are likely to suffer under their own philosophy and I wouldn’t even bother trying to appeal to them on grounds of being a decent human being.

I guess they think they are immortal. Clearly they believe they are superior. But contrary to this self-destructive, unenlightened worldview, many of them are going to be disabled or stricken with illness and if they are lucky they will get old and infirm. And I hate to break it to them, but every last one of these people, good or bad, fat or thin, rich or poor, is going to die someday. Being a selfish jackass won’t save any of them from that fate.

.

Must Have Been Some Meeting Coming Up With That Excuse

by dday

Rep. Lynn Jenkins (R-KS) last night mused about finding a “Great White Hope” for the Republican Party.

“Republicans are struggling right now to find the great white hope,” said Jenkins. “I suggest to any of you who are concerned about that, who are Republican, there are some great young Republican minds in Washington.” As examples, Jenkins mentioned Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI).

Now, given the history of that phrase, used in the American lexicon to describe the turn-of-the-century search for a white opponent to defeat the first African-American heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson during a time of racial polarization, I think it’s pretty clear what Jenkins meant, or at least what she wanted to dog-whistle. But the whistle apparently was loud enough for humans to hear, so Jenkins and her staff had to have a late-night strategy session to come up with an excuse. Here’s the best she could do:

U.S. Rep. Lynn Jenkins on Thursday in Lawrence denied that she was speaking in racial terms when she invoked the term “great white hope” at a recent town hall forum.

Jenkins, a Topeka Republican serving her first term in the House, told a recent gathering in northeast Kansas that the Republican Party is looking for a “great white hope” to help stop the agenda of a Democratic-controlled Congress and President Barack Obama.

“Obviously I was discussing the future of the Republican Party in response to a question about is there any hope for Republicans,” she said while touring Kansas University. “I was explaining that there are some bright lights in the House, and I was unaware of any negative connotation. If I offended somebody, obviously I apologize.”

Swing and a miss!

“I was just talking about a bright light, you know, a bright Caucasian light with white skin that can help the white Party – did I say white, I meant Republican Party, I don’t know how white got in there – to return us to the white power where we should belong. White people.”

If Jenkins were any more transparent, she’d be the Great White Hope.

.

Health Care For All

by digby

This article on CNN’s website tells us how to get the kind of health care the Kennedy’s have:

The first step to getting health care like a Kennedy is to go online and learn as much as you can about your disease, says Dave deBronkart, co-chairman of the Society for Participatory Medicine.

“It used to be that in order to get medical information, you had to be a member of what people call ‘the priesthood,'” he says. “It was a very private and closed group that got its information through medical schools and medical societies. Now all that’s changed because of the Internet.”

Step two, he says, is to communicate electronically with people who have your disease. That’s what deBronkart did in 2007 when he was found to have kidney cancer that had spread to his brain, tongue, arms, and legs. “Initially, doctors told me the median survival time was 24 weeks,” he says.

Like Kennedy, deBronkart couldn’t accept such a dismal prognosis. “I joined the Association of Cancer Online Resources, and within 15 minutes of posting a question about where the best doctors were, I had an answer,” deBronkart says.

He says the third step is to contact experts in the field, as Kennedy and Parles did when they were stricken with cancer.

“Kennedy was a good role model in that he aggressively pursued finding out all the options that were available,” deBronkart says. “You could say he scoured the earth.”

You’ll notice a couple of things missing, I’m sure.

Step 3: Have government health care that pays for nearly everything

Step 4: Be a multi-millionaire

Other than that, though, the article is quite correct. You can shop around for medical advice on the internet these days, which is great. In fact, Dr Google is my primary care doctor. The problem isn’t understanding your disease, it’s getting treatment you can afford.

Edward Kennedy wanted all Americans to have access to the kind of health care he had and to make sure everyone had a safety net in place that allowed them to take the kind of risks necessary to become a millionaire if that’s what they wanted to do. His conservative enemies, on the other hand, want to keep Americans enslaved by the wealthy, in jobs they loathe, scared to make any moves for fear that they will lose everything, including their lives, if they do. It’s the essence of the difference between liberals and conservatives regardless of their personal place in the class structure.

.

Suggested By … Glenn Beck?

by digby

Dave Weigel catches a remarkable mailing from the Republican National Committee:

I just chatted with Raymond Denny, the 64-year-old La Center, Wash., man who received the RNC’s “2009 Future of American Health Survey,” which alleged that President Obama’s health reform plans might discriminate against Republicans. Here’s the survey question:

You can’t dismiss this as fringe weirdos or “entertainment,” can you? The official Republican Party is telling its members that Democrats may use voting registration information to identify and kill them.

How long is everyone going to deny just how fucking crazy mainstream Republicanism has become? And when are people going to start asking seriously where this is headed?

Update: Speaking of Beck:

.

The Rise Of The Tenthers

by dday

This is a very important article by Ian Millhiser for The American Prospect. Conservatives have found a new Amendment in the Bill of Rights to glorify, making a grand total of two, as they trash the other eight. Their entire Constitutional theory now rests on the tenth Amendment.

Almost a year after she called for an investigation to discover which members of Congress are “anti-American,” Minnesota’s nuttiest lawmaker is back. In a recent appearance with Fox’s Sean Hannity, Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann accused her colleagues of “forg[etting] what the Constitution says” because they are poised to pass comprehensive health-care reform. Not to be outdone, Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina told right-wing activists on a conference call last Thursday that health reform violates the 10th Amendment; he also called on state legislators and governors to “champion individual freedom” by resisting the bill. Two Florida lawmakers beat DeMint to the punch, having already introduced legislation to block health reform from taking effect in their state.

These efforts are all part of a movement whose members are convinced that the 10th Amendment of the Constitution prohibits spending programs and regulations disfavored by conservatives. Indeed, while “birther” conspiracy theorists dominate the airwaves with tales of a mystical Kenyan baby smuggled into Hawaii just days after his birth, these “tenther” constitutionalists offer a theory that is no less radical but infinitely more dangerous.

Tentherism, in a nutshell, proclaims that New Deal-era reformers led an unlawful coup against the “True Constitution,” exploiting Depression-born desperation to expand the federal government’s powers beyond recognition. Under the tenther constitution, Barack Obama’s health-care reform is forbidden, as is Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. The federal minimum wage is a crime against state sovereignty; the federal ban on workplace discrimination and whites-only lunch counters is an unlawful encroachment on local businesses.

I guess the words “to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States” don’t appear in their pocket Constitutions.

Really, there’s nothing new about Tentherism – it’s basically nullification prettied up for the 21st century. But of course, nullification was a prelude to eventual secession and Civil War. It’s not completely out of bounds to see us headed in that direction.

When George Bush sought to take money out of people’s paychecks and deposit them in private retirement accounts, that was fine. Only when a Democrat takes office can the majority of actions of the federal government be seen as not only misguided, but actually in violation of the Constitution. Because conservatives consider it against the natural order of things for them not to control the government and distribute its Treasury to their favored corporate interests, a circumstance with them out of control must be criminal in nature.

This is an outgrowth of the right-wing populism we’ve seen in reaction to a recession and the uneasiness people feel with job insecurity and an uncertain economic future.

Today, however, the tenthers tap into the same populist outrage that inspired a generation of working-class religious conservatives to enthusiastically vote against their own interests. Fox News star Glenn Beck exhorts his audience to “be a constitutional watchdog for America” by lining up against health-care reform, cap-and-trade legislation, and the stimulus package. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, who enthusiastically backed a tenther “state sovereignty resolution,” told a right-wing radio host that he is “willing and ready for the fight if this administration continues to try to force their very expansive government philosophy down our collective throats.” Tenther-inspired claims that federal spending violates the Constitution are so common at “tea party” protests that it is impossible to tell where the tenthers end and the tea baggers begin.

In other words, it is all but certain that tenthers will play a significant role in selecting the GOP’s presidential nominee in 2012. And if that nominee wins, the tenthers could even come to dominate the administration in the same way that the religious right set its hooks into George W. Bush.

This is the inevitable point where all the anti-government rhetoric of the post-Reagan years was bound to go. Tenthers literally want a government that cannot govern, period. And the movement is growing. Ultimately, this is where the teabaggers meet up with the corporate interests who would thrive in an era of no regulation and no ability for the government to use their power.

But, you know, liberals are the Constitutional “activists.”

.

Wellstoning

by digby

Yesterday, I warned everyone to gird themselves for the Wellstoning and it’s already happening:

Conservative media invoke Wellstone smear in anticipation of Kennedy’s service Hannity on Kennedy’s death: “a lot of this was the politicizing of — remember Paul Wellstone’s death?” Discussing Kennedy’s death during his radio program, Sean Hannity asserted, “We’ve got The Wall Street Journal reporting — and by the way, a lot of this was the politicizing of — remember Paul Wellstone’s death? You know, ‘Let’s do everything for Paul.’ And we’re now being implored to get behind Obamacare because it’s what Ted Kennedy would have wanted.” [The Sean Hannity Show, 8/26/09] Savage fill-in Markowski on possible naming of health care bill after Kennedy: “It’s political theater” like the “Wellstone memorial.” Chris Markowski, filling in for Michael Savage on his radio program, took a caller who said that “if Ted Kennedy had wanted his name on this health care bill, I think that he would — I would want to see where he said that in writing before he died. He had plenty of time.” Markowski responded, in part, by asserting: “I don’t think he’s requested — you got to understand, it’s a show. OK? It’s political theater. Like the Democrats thought that whole Wellstone memorial was going to — it was going to force them to — it was going to allow them to win the Senate race in Minnesota. This is political theater. It’s a show.” [The Savage Nation, 8/26/09] Lopez on Kennedy’s death: Wellstone service “turned into a political rally.” The National Review Online’s Kathyrn Jean Lopez wrote in an August 26 post to the blog The Corner titled “Re: The Politics of Ted Kennedy’s Passing”: “All politicos need to remember the Wellstone funeral when a well-known politician dies. Instead of memorializing his life, his service turned into a political rally. Some of the MSNBC coverage today I’m catching looks like a [sic] Obamacare convocation. Human life is about more than poltics. And politics isn’t American Idol. Or, even, The Lion of the Senate.” Allahpundit “sure” Kennedy “eulogies won’t be politicized at all.” Hot Air blogger Allahpundit wrote in an August 26 tweet: “Looking forward to the Democratic line-up at TK’s memorial service. I’m sure the eulogies won’t be politicized at all.” Instapundit: “A Wellstone Memorial on steroids?” An August 26 post on Instapundit.com linked to a post by JammieWearingFool with the headline “A Wellstone Memorial on steroids? And how did that work out?” JammieWearingFool asserted in the post, written the same day, “While we have no doubt the Democrats will do all they can to exploit his death and will probably have a Wellstone memorial on steroids, we’ll stay above that.” The link on the words “Wellstone memorial” were to an October 30, 2002, Slate.com article describing Wellstone’s memorial services as a “pep rally.” Noting “conservative talking point,” Politico‘s Smith says “[i]t would seem odd to bar politics” from Kennedy’s funeral. In an August 26 post, Politico‘s Ben Smith referred to the comments by Allahpundit and Instapundit as “a conservative talking point [that] is emerging to counter the the hope on the left that Kennedy’s death will advance his cause of health care reform,” and commented:

Wingnuts don’t think liberals should be allowed to have political heroes. This, despite the weeks long memorials for Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan (I can still hear the keening) in recent years where I seem to recall that politics were mentioned a time or two.

I doubt seriously that the Democrats have learned how to handle these things any better than they did in the past. There’s no evidence of it anyway. In fact, if things go the way they usually do in the face of a right wing hissy fit, they will end up agreeing to scuttle health care reform altogether as penance for their bad behavior.

*Go to the link for a full debunking of the Wellstone smear from Al Franken.

.

It’s Bork, Stupid

by tristero

Originally, this was going to be a post in which I took Kennedy’s famous denunciation of Robert Bork and buttressed it with numerous links and quotes. I couldn’t write that post, because I couldn’t find the information quickly enough to do so in a timely fashion.

Why is it important to defend Kennedy’s successful opposition of Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court, one of the Senator’s greatest achievements?

Well, if you make a google using the terms robert bork nomination kennedy, the first thing that comes up (as of 10:00 am Eastern today) is a genuinely disgusting National Review Online article reprinted on NPR. The third is a poorly written attack on Kennedy and a defense of Bork on Powerline. If you Google the blogs with the same terms, up comes nothing on the first page but posts condemning Kennedy’s opposition to Bork or simply reports that he opposed him.

That is how fast the rightwing acts to get out in front to set the terms of the debate.

On the other hand, the defense of Kennedy’s opposition is disorganized and tepid. In fact, I couldn’t find much this morning. For example, Josh’s site, which is widely read by journalists, has essentially the standard praise for Kennedy we see everywhere, but nothing on Bork, one of Kennedy’s finest moments. This link from Tapped was the best I could come up with. All the serious opposition articles from that time that I checked or tried to find – on the Washington Post, the Times, the New York Review of Books – are incomplete, inadequate for use today, or behind firewalls for which you have to pay for access. Furthermore, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, which published an influential report called “Bork v. Bork” during the nomination hearings, has not yet chosen to post it to the web.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure that if I took more than the hour plus that I actually did take to search the web, and if I were more clever in my search terms, I could eventually find quotes that would convince anyone sane that Robert Bork is a world-class kook. My point is that no one, neither Democrats nor progressives, has bothered to make that information easy to find. Meanwhile, the right has marshalled its attacks so quickly that once again, we are playing catchup.

Here is what Kennedy said, less than an hour after Bork was nominated to the Supreme Court.

Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is — and is often the only — protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy.

By speaking this forcefully, and – equally important – reacting so quickly to Reagan’s awful appointment, Kennedy helped prevent Bork’s for elevation to the highest court in the land, for which this country owes the Senator its gratitude.

I have no doubt that Kennedy was 100% right about Bork. However, without backup, Kennedy seems over the top, beyond the pale, shrill, unstatesmanlike, etc. While Tapped tried, its links barely support Kennedy’s assertions. And as of this writing, no one in the Democratic party and no progressive organization has thought to compile easily accessible and truly comprehensive support for Kennedy’s charges.

No wonder we lose so often. No wonder we can’t make use of our victories.

Oh, some of you in comments may come up with a link that I missed (and thanks in advance for doing so)… and maybe later today, Glenn or some other lawyer will put up a pile of stuff, but it’s already too late. Relevant material necessary to oppose the rightwing should always be within easy reach of anyone with a computer. And just as we saw with healthcare this summer, both Democrats and progressive groups failed to anticipate an easily predicted, organized rightwing assault.

Now you may think, who cares? The coverage of Kennedy has been almost completely worshipful and Bork is ancient history. To which I respond that to the right, nothing is too trivial, no battle is so old that they wont try to make it an issue if they think it will advance their position today. No, we shouldn’t behave like the right. But Democrats and progressive leaders need to understand that when it comes to confronting the right, this ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, this ain’t no fooling around.

[UPDATE: Here’s a link to a pdf of the “Biden Report”, which was used back in ’87 to oppose Bork. It’s 72 pages, far too long to qualify for rapid responses in the age of Twitter.]

Put Them In A Line-up

by digby

Oh Goody:

By the time Congress returns from its recess and takes another whack at the health insurance mess, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., will have started revealing the deceit that protects health business profiteers.

Waxman has already begun by demanding that major insurance companies reveal how much they pay top executives and board members and, most important, the size of their profits from selling policies.

He is getting to the heart of the health insurance debate. It’s all about the health business—insurance, hospitals, pharmaceutical and biotech companies, medical equipment makers and others.

Their economic goal is bigger profits. Their political goal is to protect their interests by making sure the 2010 election puts enough Republicans and sympathetic Democrats in Congress. Even if the Democrats retain control of the House and Senate, health care lobbyists will pour celebratory drinks as long they have enough power to shape legislation. That’s how it works. Don’t be deluded by party labels.

Last week, I talked to Waxman about what’s happening in health care. I found him at UCLA, at a forum on another of his interests, preventing climate change.

If you’re a reporter looking for a hot quote, Waxman’s the wrong man to see. Anyone watching his “Daily Show” appearance with Jon Stewart could tell you that. Waxman is all policy, determined to explain everything in detail. But he’s smart, tough and knows how to get results. He showed that last year when he went against the House seniority system and took over the Energy and Commerce Committee by unseating John Dingell, its longtime chairman.

I asked Waxman whether he expected the insurance companies to reply to his letters. “Oh yes,” he said. “When we write letters, we expect to get answers.” And what was his purpose in seeking the information? At first, he was reluctant to discuss the investigation. Finally, he gave a guarded reply: that many folks perhaps take too benign a view of private insurance companies.

Henry Waxman knows how to hold a hearing for maximum effect. The timing for this might just be perfect.

.

The Eulogies

by digby

There are some really great eulogies for EMK all over the internet and I hope you take the time to read as many of them as you can. Liberal heroes don’t come along every day and it’s immensely gratifying to read all these thoughts from people who knew him and lived through his time.

For instance, via Eric Alterman, I came across this wonderful piece from a few years back by the great Charles Pierce:

If his name were Edward Moore . . .

He would not have served so long, if he’d served at all. He might not have served with more than 350 other senators. He would not have served with all three men – Everett Dirksen, Richard Russell, and Philip Hart – after whom the Senate office buildings are named. He would not have had his first real fight over the poll tax and his most recent one over going to war in Iraq. None of this would have happened if his name were Edward Moore.

If his name were Edward Moore . . .

If his name were Edward Moore, Robert Bork might be on the Supreme Court today. Robert Dole might have been elected president of the United States. There might still be a draft. There would not have been the Civil Rights Act of 1991, which overturned seven Supreme Court decisions that Kennedy saw as rolling back the gains of the civil rights movement; the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act, the most
wide-ranging civil rights bill since the original ones in the 1960s; the Kennedy-Kassebaum Bill of 1996, which allows “portability” in health care coverage; or any one of the 35 other initiatives – large and small, on everything from Medicare to the minimum wage to immigration reform – that Kennedy, in opposition and in the minority, managed to cajole and finesse through the Senate between 1996 and
1998, masterfully defusing the Gingrich Revolution and maneuvering Dole into such complete political incoherence that Bill Clinton won reelection in a walk. None of this would have happened, if his name were Edward Moore.

Go through his speeches of just the last decade and you’ll find that he was on the right side every time, making the argument. God knows there were few enough who did.

Update: I just got an email from Bold Progressives with this mesaage, which I think is great:

Senator Kennedy called health care reform “the cause of my life.” We’ve seen comments from across the country saying the Senate should pass the strong reform bill that came out of Kennedy’s health committee — which includes the public health insurance option — and name it “The Kennedy Bill” in his honor. We agree. So we created a petition to the Senate that we’ll deliver Monday — can you sign it? PETITION: “Ted Kennedy was a courageous champion for health care reform his entire life. In his honor, name the reform bill that passed Kennedy’s health committee ‘The Kennedy Bill’ — then pass it, and nothing less, through the Senate.” Please click here to add your name. In less than an hour, over 1,000 people have already signed! All signatures will be hand-delivered to the offices of Harry Reid and other key senators in Washington DC next Monday, August 31 — just as the Senate is returning from August recess. Senators will soon choose between Kennedy’s bill and another being written by conservative Democrats and Republicans, which likely will not include a public option. Let’s honor Kennedy’s memory by naming his own bill after him — and telling his Senate colleagues it would be a disgrace to vote against it or to water it down. Can you join us? Click here to add your name. Then, please forward this email to others.

.

Deja Vu All Over Again

by tristero

Healthcare wonks should know this amazing article by James Fallows re: the Clinton/Magaziner attempt to reform healthcare in the early 90’s (h/t Bob Somerby). But apparently the ones working for the Democrats don’t or they wouldn’t have been caught with their shortpants around their ankles this summer.

It’s all terribly familiar, even many of the same liars making up the same shit, and the same strategies. A few choice excerpts below, but, as they say, RTWT:

Much of the problem for the plan seemed, at least in Washington, to come not even from mandatory alliances but from an article by Elizabeth McCaughey, then of the Manhattan Institute, published in The New Republic last February. The article’s working premise was that McCaughey, with no ax to grind and no preconceptions about health care, sat down for a careful reading of the whole Clinton bill. Appalled at the hidden provisions she found, she felt it her duty to warn people about what the bill might mean. The title of her article was “No Exit,” and the message was that Bill and Hillary Clinton had proposed a system that would lock people in to government-run care. “The law will prevent you from going outside the system to buy basic health coverage you think is better,” McCaughey wrote in the first paragraph. “The doctor can be paid only by the plan, not by you.”

George Will immediately picked up this warning, writing in Newsweek that “it would be illegal for doctors to accept money directly from patients, and there would be 15-year jail terms for people driven to bribery for care they feel they need but the government does not deem ‘necessary.'” The “doctors in jail” concept soon turned up on talk shows and was echoed for the rest of the year.

These claims, McCaughey’s and Will’s, were simply false. McCaughey’s pose of impartiality was undermined by her campaign as the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor of New York soon after her article was published. I was less impressed with her scholarly precision after I compared her article with the text of the Clinton bill. Her shocked claim that coverage would be available only for “necessary” and “appropriate” treatment suggested that she had not looked at any of today’s insurance policies. In claiming that the bill would make it impossible to go outside the health plan or pay doctors on one’s own, she had apparently skipped past practically the first provision of the bill (Sec. 1003), which said,

“Nothing in this Act shall be construed as prohibiting the following: (1) An individual from purchasing any health care services.”

It didn’t matter. The White House issued a point-by-point rebuttal, which The New Republic did not run. Instead it published a long piece by McCaughey attacking the White House statement. The idea of health policemen stuck…

Through most of 1993 the Republicans believed that a health-reform bill was inevitable, and they wanted to be on the winning side. Bob Dole said he was eager to work with the Administration and appeared at events side by side with Hillary Clinton to endorse universal coverage. Twenty-three Republicans said that universal coverage was a given in a new bill.

In 1994 the Republicans became convinced that the President and his bill could be defeated. Their strategist, William Kristol, wrote a memo recommending a vote against any Administration health plan, “sight unseen.” Three committees in the House and two in the Senate began considering the bill in earnest early in the year. Republicans on several committees had indicated that they would collaborate with Democrats on a bill; as the year wore on, Republicans dropped their support, one by one, for any health bill at all. Robert Packwood, who had supported employer mandates for twenty years, discovered that he opposed them in 1994. “[He] has assumed a prominent role in the campaign against a Democratic alternative that looks almost exactly like his own earlier policy prescriptions,” the National Journal wrote. Early last summer conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans tried to put together a “mainstream coalition” supporting a plan without universal coverage, without employer mandates, and without other features that Republicans had opposed. In August, George Mitchell, the Democratic Party’s Senate majority leader, announced a plan that was almost pure symbolism–no employer mandates, very little content except a long-term goal of universal coverage. Led by Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich, Republicans by September were opposing any plan. “Every time we moved toward them, they would move away,” Hillary Clinton says.

“Republicans by September were opposing any plan.”

Hey, it worked the first time. Worked like a charm.