So much in politics these days comes down to the delusions held by conservatives, whether they come from Fox, talk radio, a crazy lady writing on Facebook in Alaska, or random voices in their heads. Issues rarely seem to come down to real differences in opinion these days. Instead they are based upon the differences between reality and the delusions of conservatives. The claims of “death panels’ provides an excellent example of this. Greg Sargent has been analyzing a recent Research 2000 poll which asked if people believe the health reform proposal contains “death panels.” Sargent noted these results among Republicans:
Yes: 26
No: 43
Not sure: 31
In this case the number of Republicans who are not sure of something which has no basis in reality is a significant finding. Adding up those who believe this false claim with those who are unsure totals 57 percent of Republicans being unaware of the facts. He also noted that only eight percent of independents accept this claim. In addition 16 percent are unsure with 76 percent of independents realizing this is untrue. The numbers are even stronger for Democrats with 88 percent answering no.
These findings are related to other findings in the poll which show that a sizable number of Republicans believe Fox is a reliable source of information and also do not get news from other sources. During the height of the Soviet Union I doubt that Russians were as gullible as to the reliability of Pravda as Republicans are with regards to Fox.
Factcheck.org also debunked a conservative ad today which contains false claims about care for the elderly as well as several other false claims being used to scare seniors. Of course this won’t change the mind of those who are brainwashed by the right. They are told that any objective source of information is actually a biased liberal source making it almost impossible to alter the views of those on the far right with the facts.
While they show far more understanding of the actual facts, blind ideology might also become a problem from the left with threats to block health care reform if it does not contain a public plan. In some cases this is because some on the left see a public plan as a back door way of achieving a single payer system. This is somewhat unrealistic considering how watered down the public plan already is and how few it is likely to actually cover.
The question remains as to what will happen if we reach a point where the only item before Congress is a proposal with significant improvements but without a public plan. Will liberal Democrats will really let a good bill go down to defeat over this? Some liberals are beginning to question the wisdom of this. For example, Matthew Yglesias has popularized an idea to split health care reform into more than one bill:
One bill, a filibusterable non-reconciliation bill, would set up the basic framework of a health insurance “exchange” on which individuals and small businesses could get insurance. It would feature an employer mandate, some kind of sad co-op, and some not-very generous subsidies. It would be subject to various kinds of regulation including the White House’s key eight points of consumer protection. It’s a bill liberals would find horribly disappointing, but you could imagine it getting sixty votes in the senate.
Then if you get that done, all you need is a second bill. At that point, changing the co-op rules to make it work like a real public option, making the subsidies more generous, expanding Medicaid, and other wholesome progressive stuff all becomes budget-relevant material that can be done through reconciliation with only fifty votes. It’s not clear at this point that the public option has fifty votes in the senate, but it’s close, and I’m reasonably certain that the votes could be found if the procedural path existed.
I fear that such a strategy would only give Republicans even more motivation to filibuster the first bill, but if this were to play out I would suggest one change. The second bill should not expand Medicaid but eliminate it and move Medicaid patients into a public plan. The goal of universal health care should be to provide a decent basement level of care for all Americans without keeping many in a second class status in Medicaid. Even backers of a Republican plan support the idea of giving “lower-income Americans a way out of the Medicaid ghetto so they can have the dignity of private insurance.” This is one Republican idea which Democrats should seriously consider.