(Rather than rant and rave, blame and name call, or gloat, I think making an effort to put the Republican healthcare debacle we saw last Friday in a larger context might help us find our way through this chaos. This is the first of two blogs to this end. Because they are intertwined, the second one will follow in a couple of days to allow enough time to read this one, but not too much time that you forget what it says before the next one appears.)
What highly respected journalist and former ABC anchor, Ted Koppel, said to Sean Hannity on Fix News last week summarized why the Republican Obamacare replacement bill fell under its own weight.
You probably saw it. Koppel told Hannity that he believed he was bad for America. When Hannity asked why, Koppel replied: “Because you tend to attract people who are determined that ideology is more important than facts.”
That in a nutshell is why the Republicans failed in their effort to replace Obamacare. Ideology drives Republican policy making, and demands an all or nothing attitude on everything.
That is why facts are irrelevant to them. When the CBO assessment of the Republican healthcare proposal estimated that 24 million people would lose healthcare coverage, Republicans simply rejected it. That is how ideology works.
But there is one ideological position that undergirds everything else conservatives believe. Conservative writer David Frum identified what it is in an article in The Atlantic last Saturday when he quoted Arthur Clark, his former boss at the conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation. Clark wrote:
“We must choose whether America will continue to be a unique and exceptional nation organized around the principle of free enterprise or whether America will move toward European-style statism grounded in expanding bureaucracies, increasing income redistribution, and government-controlled corporations. These competing visions are not reconcilable.”
Protecting free enterprise is what conservatives believe in more than anything else. This is their ideological mantra that drives all their policy making, and, as Clark said, any other competing perspective is not reconcilable.
In short, the ideology of protecting the free market at all costs requires an “our way or no way” attitude.
Members of the Freedom Caucus in the House of Representatives are purists on this point. That is why they took down the healthcare bill last Friday. As bad as it was, for example, it still has provisions that interfered with a free market, such as guaranteeing that people with pre-existing conditions, including pregnancy, could get insurance.
In their view the government has only one obligation to the public, to ensure that people have access to healthcare. Whether or not they get it should be controlled by a for profit insurance market.
Interestingly enough, we already know what happens when this approach prevails.
In 2009, a year before Obamacare was passed, a highly respected Harvard University study was released that documented the fact that approximately 45,000 Americans were dying annually from preventable causes because of the lack of healthcare.
At the time, liberals and conservatives both agreed that this was unacceptable, but conservatives insisted the insurance industry could and would fix it, even if the facts said they couldn’t and wouldn’t.
Liberal political leaders took a different approach. They focused on morality rather than ideology, on what the government’s moral responsibility was to people and their health. Obamacare was the result.
Republicans have been fighting against it ever since, only last week they showed the nation that they are better at criticizing than they are at governing.
That will always be true as long as ideology drives them. The last eight years are living proof that this is how Republicans function, or, more accurately, practice dysfunction.
So where do we go from here? Sadly, even tragically, we have a president who tweeted that he thinks things will be great if ObamaCare explodes.
Really? All of a sudden a magical solution will appear and his promise that everybody will have insurance at a cheaper rate than ever before will come true?
Let’s hope that more reality based thinking will go into solving the very real problems Obamacare has than that.
And as unlikely as it may seem, such thinking is possible. There are practical suggestions that can become a path to reform.
But the requirement of reality based thinking does impose one condition, that ideologues are left out of the process. If that can be done, progress can be made.
What that would look like will be our focus next time.
linnposts.com 
How
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Les
Jan
Thanks for the insights and summary of issues facing us.
Les
That’s coming next.
Les, keep writing. Comments help the discussion.
Thanks Jan. There’s a chilling book out called “Dark Money” that details how the Koch brothers and a few of their billionaire friends have used their wealth to influence politicians and government, all simply to protect and increase their wealth. It’s ideology without morality. You are right on. Looking forward to your next blog.
Wilbur, I think I am making an accurate assessment of the situation as well, but, that being the case, it is a sad state of affairs.
“Our way or no way”. Sadly, we have this kind of non-thinking in my country too. How Karl Marx must be lauging in his grave, since we’re bidden to have a free market in just about everything. Except for ideas.
It is sad that you are so right in what you say, Nigel. Ideas seem to be the last thing people want to hear.
Jan – I think we are entitled to buy health insurance, not entitled to have health insurance. Not unlike an automobile, we are entitled to buy, not to have. (not intending to be flippant)
As for those that are not financially capable of buying health care, there are provisions via the government. I agree with this. Again, not unlike an automobile, there are provisions via a generous people. I marvel at this.
Summary – I am concerned when we look to the government too much. I also believe a free enterprise system works. The insurance industry, not unlike the auto industry, provides a necessary service and it needs to operate at a profit to survive.
Having said this, I would love to see the insurance industry be allowed to meet demand – no differently than the auto industry has done. With autos there are “Cadillacs and Volkswagens”, Minis and Vans, three wheelers and four wheelers, even any color desired not to mention new and used.
I believe the insurance industry could be as creative and diverse with amazing, desirable results.
Edmund, I think comparing health insurance to car insurance or owning a car itself is like comparing apples and oranges. They are nothing alike. A car is a convenience. Health insurance is a matter of life and death, as the 45,000 deaths we were seeing before Obamacare. In addition, how can you say that the for-profit insurance market works well in light of those deaths?
The issue of making a profit is a bogus one. The issue for insurance companies is never making a profit or not. It is always a matter of how much profit. The fact that the CEOs of all insurance companies are the highest paid executives in the nation says all of the, have been doing quite well and still are.
That you don’t believe healthcare is a right is what separates us. Our views immediately diverge from that point, and I confess that I simply do not understand how anyone can say that a pregnant mother, a sick child, an elderly parent does not deserve healthcare as a human right. That is simply a moral bridge too far for me to cross.