DB Editorial
Appearing on the August 16 edition of Meet the Press, former House Majority Leader and inaugural inductee into the Tea Baggers’ Hall of Fame Dick Armey presented perhaps the strongest argument to date in support of the principle of a government run health care option.
Armey, best known to many Americans as the author of the mid-1990s GOP “Contract on America” was speaking about his role in a lawsuit seeking the right of individuals to opt-out of participation in Medicare Part A. In arguing the point, he referred to the option of participation as a “gift”, acknowledging that the program works well for most, but called mandatory participation “tyranny”.
Thanks Dick, I couldn’t have put it better myself. Why shouldn’t people have the option of shopping for their own coverage including a government plan — regardless of age?
The obvious benefit is that there would be a lot more private insurers competing for a piece of the new pie than have wanted any part of the ‘over-65’ health insurance market, which guys like Dick would have you believe they really want. Well, maybe he has only thought that way since retiring from elected office…
According to an article written personally by the Freedomworks Chairman and Chief Executive Pot-Stirrer titled Stop The Government’s Illegalities On Social Security, Medicare, the guru of town-hall obstructionism claims that those opting out of Medicare Part A would also forfeit their Social Security benefits as the result of “backdoor administrative measures adopted some 16 years ago and only recently coming to light”.
How convenient. It happened during one of the two years out of the past 28 that Dick’s hated opposition controlled both Congress and the Executive branch of government! And during his eight years as majority leader, poor Dick had no way of knowing that his oppressed constituents were getting, well… dicked. Nor did it surface during the eight years that George W. Bush appointees were in charge of the relevant federal agencies. Those liberal elites really are a slippery bunch, aren’t they?
O.K. I’m not going to call this particular Dick a liar. For the sake of argument, let’s say that these “backdoor administrative measures” really did just recently come to light. As court documents are a matter of public record, there can be only one explanation of how this “tyranny” went unchecked for all these years – nobody ever fought it – not once in all those years. I guess either there has never been a need to or we’re so use to such tyranny that all of our seniors are suffering from Stockholm syndrome.
Additionally, it’s reasonably safe to assume that the insurance industry didn’t want it fought either, since now they can write policies on seniors where Medicare is the ‘primary’ coverage and the private insurance is ‘secondary’, meaning that the insurance companies are only on the hook for what Medicare doesn’t cover.
Common sense tells us two things here: first, that senior citizens, as a group, cost much more to cover than the overall population, and; second, that if private insurers had any interest in becoming primary insurers for the elderly that their lobbyists would have buried Congress in legislation and cash while the Dicks of the land were still in power. Besides, any current Medicare Part A recipient who can afford to opt out probably would never miss the Social Security benefits anyway.
Single-payer systems have proven not only to greatly reduce costs, but have also led to citizens of more than 20 countries that employ them having longer life expectancies than Americans. (The U.S. ranks 50th overall, according to the CIA’s World Factbook, albeit behind some pretty stiff opposition like Jordan, Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and most notably, Wallis and Futuna… really.) But even I am resigned to the fact that Americans, thanks to fear-mongers like my new friend Dick, will never accept such a radical change.
So the next best thing, as Mr. Armey himself pointed out, is to let people choose between private insurers and a government option.
Hey, donations are down. They needed the work...
