Time Warp
Last week, Nicholas Kristof found some more opposition to health care reform.
Critics storm that health care reform is “a cruel hoax and a delusion.” Ads in 100 newspapers thunder that reform would mean “the beginning of socialized medicine.”
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page predicts that the legislation will lead to “deteriorating service.” Business groups warn that Washington bureaucrats will invade “the privacy of the examination room,” that we are on the road to rationed care and that patients will lose the “freedom to choose their own doctor.”
Have you figured out the punchline yet?
Those quotes, familiar as they seem, were actually from the 1960s, when the reform being debated was Medicare.
Indeed, these same arguments we hear today against health reform were used even earlier, to attack President Franklin Roosevelt’s call for Social Security. It was denounced as a socialist program that would compete with private insurers and add to Americans’ tax burden so as to kill jobs.
So apparently, a strong public health insurance option would lead to gloom, doom, and the enduring popularity of Medicare and Social Security.
Tags: health care reform, Medicare, social security
On issue after issue, this has happened. The same crowd that is denouncing health care reform has always boldly stood up against civil rights, and worker’s rights. There were similar claims made against the banning of slavery and child labor…confidently, the opponents of working people claimed that such bans would destroy the natural order of the economy and civilization, and that it would lead to the end of industrial development. They were wrong.They warned us that womens’ voting and political engagement would starve their uteruses of needed energy and destroy the human race. No dice. Then they warned us that social security and Medicare would destroy America and deliver us to socialist oppression. Too bad those programs turned out to be enormously popular and effective.
Time and again, after being denounced, and mischaracterized, policies that help working families and ensure greater justice have passed, and become extremely popular. Then, the critics act as if they supported the changes all along. (See Medicare, right now). Or better yet, they go on to denounce the next progressive change as the real, true, utter end of civilization. No number of false predictions can discredit them. The poor things, huddling in terror at any improvement in the human condition, will always be with us.
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