Joe Klein on Health Care Reform

The Left's Idiocy on Health Reform
By Joe Klein Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2009




In the snarkier precincts of the left-wing blogosphere, mainstream journalists like me are often called villagers. The reference, so far as I can tell, has to do with isolation: we live in this little village on the Potomac — actually, I don't, but no matter — constantly intermingling over hors d'oeuvres, deciding who is "serious" (a term of derision in the blogosphere) and who is not, regurgitating spin spoon-fed by our sources or conjuring a witless conventional wisdom that has nothing to do with reality as it is lived outside the village. There is, of course, some truth to this. Washington is insular; certain local shamans are celebrated beyond all logic; some of my columnar colleagues have lost touch with everything beyond their armchairs and egos.

But there is a great irony here: villagery is a trope more applicable to those making the accusation than to those being snarked upon. The left-wing blogosphere, at its worst, is a claustrophobic hamlet of the well educated, less interested in meaningful debate than the "village" it mocks. (At its best, it is a source of clever and well-informed anti-Establishment commentary.) Indeed, it resembles nothing so much as that other, more populous hamlet, the right-wing Fox News and Limbaugh slum. Hilariously, as we stagger from one awful decade into the next, there has been a coagulation of these extremes — a united front against the turgid ceremonies of legislative democracy, like compromise, and disdain for the politician most responsible for nudging our snarled checks and balances toward action, Barack Obama. The issue that has brought them together is opposition to the Senate's health care–reform bill, which makes some sense on the right, but none at all on the left.
(See the 5 things that the House and Senate have to iron out on health care.)

The prejudices of the tea partiers, birthers, deathers, Palinites and other assorted "real" Americans are well known; the historic conservative opposition to universal health care isn't news. The dyspepsia of the left blogosphere is less easily explained, though. It has its roots in an issue the left got right and almost everyone else got wrong: the war in Iraq. There is still intense, unabated anger on the left because its opposition to the war was often ridiculed and almost always ignored in 2003. The anger at so-called moderates — actually, Democratic conservatives like Joe Lieberman — who supported the war is especially intense. This was the anger that fed the Howard Dean movement in 2004, and it sets the emotional parameters for other issues far more complicated than the war, like health care. Those who were wrong about Iraq can't be trusted on anything else.

Actually, both the left and right opponents of health care reform are drinking from the same watercooler. Activists on both sides — consulting their focus groups, no doubt — found that the message that most roused their troops was the same: a government takeover of health care. The tidbit in the plan that came closest to embodying that message was a worthy but relatively minor provision called the public option, which would offer something like Medicare as one of a menu of choices for several million Americans not receiving health insurance from their employers. For the right, this was socialism. For the left, it was a step toward stripping private insurers of their choke hold on the system. When the public option was killed — by Lieberman, of all people — the left saw Iraq redux and rebelled. Not only was there no public option, but people would also be mandated — forced! — to patronize the same insurance companies that exploit them now. There would be a windfall of 30 million new customers for the insurers and drug companies. What a sellout! Bloggers at sites like Daily Kos, the Huffington Post (including Arianna herself) and FireDogLake held a village bonfire. Dean materialized to help fan the flames.
(Read "Forcing Insurers to Spend Enough on Health Care.")

To be sure, the bill that emerged from the Senate has problems. But it is landmark social legislation that guarantees and subsidizes health care coverage for 30 million Americans who don't have it now. Yes, this means a lot of new customers for the insurance companies — but the insurers will face strict new regulations, and many of their new customers will be people they refused to cover in the past. Ultimately, it means an annual income redistribution of $200 billion to help the working poor pay for insurance, which is why Republicans oppose the bill. But Jacob Hacker, the leading promoter of the public option, favors it. Every Democratic Senator, including those like Ohio's Sherrod Brown who have impeccable liberal records, favors it.