It\'s Time For ACA Haters To Go Off Reagan\'s Record
“Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine” didn't crack the top 100 list of recordings released in 1961, but its legacy endures as much as anything cranked out by Elvis and the Beatles.
That 10-minute record was meant as a preemptive strike against a movement to create a healthcare system for elderly Americans.
“One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine,” Reagan explained. “It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project, most people are a little reluctant to oppose anything that suggests medical care for people who possibly can’t afford it.”
On the history scoreboard, Reagan lost resoundingly: Medicare was signed into law four years after he made the recording. And the American Medical Association, which had backed his efforts, is now the absolute last lobby on earth that would advocate for Medicare cuts.
But Reagan's words have apparently remained embedded in the brains of too many policymakers. At a time when American citizens are being blown apart by drones, American soldiers are force-feeding suspected terrorists in order to prolong their indefinite detention and the National Security Agency apparently eavesdrops on every email and phone call made in this country, the Affordable Care Act is easily the nation's most reviled social policy.
This vituperation has continued despite the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that virtually all of the ACA is constitutional, and the Obama Administration is bending over backward to accommodate the demands of businesses and insurance companies.
And it reached a new low late last week when the Indiana Department of Insurance – an appendage of avowed ACA-hater Gov. Mike Pence – all but lied about how much health insurance would cost through its health insurance exchange. It claimed that individual insurance premiums would rise an average of 72%.
Of course, agency officials refused to reveal how it reached those numbers. It took Sarah Kliff, the dogged Washington Post reporter, to determine Indiana compared the lowest rates currently available with the average of all the rates available through the exchange. That completely ignored the actuarial data provided by the insurers estimating that close to half of all enrollees will buy the least expensive coverage, and the vast majority would purchase the lowest-priced bronze and silver plans. It's the equivalent of saying “the average cost of a car in an Indiana dealership is $100,000 because it sells $20,000 Fords, $60,000 BMWs, and $220,000 Lamborghinis — technically true, but highly misleading,” Sy Mukherjee of Think Progress observed. Even Forbes, not exactly a bastion of moderate social policies, slammed the agency's math.
Reagan wasn't above abusing facts – remember his assertions about Cadillac-driving welfare queens? But he was wise enough to steer away from Medicare after it was a settled issue. And while it's one thing for individual politicians to slam a policy they disagree with, when an entire public agency with a fiduciary duty to consumers clouds facts due to politics, a line has been crossed.
Meanwhile, it looks like the GOP members of Congress will attempt a shutdown of the entire federal government this fall to prevent the ACA from being implemented.
The ACA will not do enough to control costs, but it will bring access to healthcare for millions of Americans, and they will live healthier – and longer – lives as a result. Its opponents have never suggested a better plan. Given this one is going into effect in little more than five months, time has run out to destroy it.
If you're a politician entirely against ACA, you should be required to answer the one core question remaining: Why large swaths of your constituency should die sooner than others. And since this question cannot be answered, these politicians should pledge to work across the aisle to fix the ACA's flaws.
As for the Reagan record, it should be relegated to where every other LP belongs: The remainder bin.
Ron Shinkman is the publisher of Payers & Providers.
