The War on Logic
Paul Krugman gets this right we need health care and if you are going to argue against it at least make some sense. Right now almost half of America will have pre-existing conditions at age 65 & The GOP is being disingenuous with health care and they are really being clumsy about it.
Look at the grandstand name of the repeal bill, it’s sounds exactly like what some people’s committee would come up with in a last century banana republic with a communist cult of personality dictator that everyone feared to tick off. It’s double talk — the GOP needs to skip that and forget the doc fix. They need a wonk fix — someone with vision and new ideas, not catechisms and bumper stickers. But unfortunately they chased all of those people out during the great RINO hunt 2006-2011.
We are, I believe, witnessing something new in American politics. Last year, looking at claims that we can cut taxes, avoid cuts to any popular program and still balance the budget, I observed that Republicans seemed to have lost interest in the war on terror and shifted focus to the war on arithmetic. But now the G.O.P. has moved on to an even bigger project: the war on logic.
So, about that nonsense: this week the House is expected to pass H.R. 2, the Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act — its actual name. But Republicans have a small problem: they claim to care about budget deficits, yet the Congressional Budget Office says that repealing last year’s health reform would increase the deficit. So what, other than dismissing the nonpartisan budget office’s verdict as “their opinion” — as Mr. Boehner has — can the G.O.P. do?
The answer is contained in an analysis — or maybe that should be “analysis” — released by the speaker’s office, which purports to show that health care reform actually increases the deficit. Why? That’s where the war on logic comes in.
First of all, says the analysis, the true cost of reform includes the cost of the “doc fix.” What’s that?
Well, in 1997 Congress enacted a formula to determine Medicare payments to physicians. The formula was, however, flawed; it would lead to payments so low that doctors would stop accepting Medicare patients. Instead of changing the formula, however, Congress has consistently enacted one-year fixes. And Republicans claim that the estimated cost of future fixes, $208 billion over the next 10 years, should be considered a cost of health care reform.