Why Republicans are So Intent on Killing Health Care Reform

[ProSense]

Why Republicans are So Intent on Killing Health Care Reform

by Richard Kirsch

It’s not just about expanded care. It’s about proving our government can be a force for the common good.

Why are John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Mitch McConnell so intent on stopping health care reform from ever taking hold? For the same reason that Republicans and the corporate Right spent more than $200 million in the last year to demonize health care in swing Congressional districts. It wasn’t just about trying to stop the bill from becoming law or taking over Congress. It is because health reform, if it takes hold, will create a bond between the American people and government, just as Social Security and Medicare have done. Democrats, and all those who believe that government has a positive place in our lives, should remember how much is at stake as Republicans and corporate elites try to use their electoral victory to dismantle the new health care law.

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There’s nothing new here. Throughout American history, health care reform has been attacked as socialist. An editorial published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in December 1932, just after FDR’s election, claimed that proposals for compulsory insurance “were socialism and communism — inciting to revolution.” The PR firm that the American Medical Association hired to fight Truman’s push for national health insurance succeeded in popularizing a completely concocted quote that it attributed to Vladimir Lenin: “Socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the Socialist State.”

In 1961, Ronald Reagan made an LP recording for an AMA front group called Operation Coffeecup entitled “Ronald Reagan speaks out against SOCIALIZED MEDICINE,” in which the future President says that Medicare will be the foot in the door to a totalitarian takeover. Almost half a century later, Sarah Palin quoted Reagan’s words during her speech accepting the Republican nomination for Vice-President.

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The Right has always understood how high the American view of the role of government would be lifted if people came to rely on government for something as essential to a person’s well-being as health care. This year, the animus that the Right maintains toward the New Deal and Great Society programs and philosophy — Social Security, Medicare, the constitution allowing the federal public to regulate commerce — has become visible in the Tea Party movement. The last thing that the corporate and ideological Right want is for health care to be a new pillar added to the foundation of government social insurance.

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[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. the shorter title:

Why are Republicans to intent on killing?

Social Security cuts
Destruction of Medicare/Medicaid
Iraq
Iran
Afghanistan

the list grows longer.

[Little Star]

2. I think there is a lot of truth to that concept.

[flamingdem]

3. The Government sure has been good them, they just don't like to share nt

[WingDinger]

4. Same reason as their intent to repeal ALL Obama.

[DAlnB]

5. The Party of "let us have the credit."

For years and years both Republicans and Democrats have talked about the need for a National Health Care Law. Most often when a bill was introduced for such a bill it was done by a Republican. Both parties agree to the need but it took the Obama Administration to get serious enough and aggressive enough to make it happen. The GOP declared before it even hit the floor for review and discussion that they would fight it. They wanted to be the ones to pass the bill. Their purpose was not to see the bill passed our rejected but to see that the Obama Administration was not credited with anything productive. Their mission was and continues to be one of seeing the Obama Administration fails. How sad to think that any elected official, and more so a political body, should work so hard to see an elected president fail. If Obama is too fail let it be on his own. Another presidential failure is another American failure! The Health care bill was demonized by the massive and continuous degrading by the GOPs supported radio and TV radical talk show hosts; probably less than 1 in 2500 Americans have read any part of the bill and can only talk about what they have heard on the radio and TV. Obama’s administration failed to counter the massive media attacks leaving public opinion to what the GOP was selling.

[ProSense]

6. Welcome to DU, but I really don't believe this:

They wanted to be the ones to pass the bill. Their purpose was not to see the bill passed our rejected but to see that the Obama Administration was not credited with anything productive.

Republicans have had many opportunities to pass health care reform, under Reagan and both Bushes. They run on it, but they are never serious.