The Road To Victory

As I've watched more and more coverage of the Health Care Reform activity in the U.S. this summer, I've been amazed at the conservative forces' ability to strike fear into the hearts of Americans. In some cases, it's been shockingly-uninformed Americans who have been targeted, such as the doddering old fools who stand up in town hall meetings and scream, "You and your damned government better not try to grab my Medicare!" (apparently quite oblivious to the fact that Medicare is already government-run). In other instances, it's been those who feel most vulnerable who fall for the baloney that's getting spread around, like the "Kill Granny" campaign and the "Obama's Death Panels" garbage that the nitwit former governor of Alaska has been spewing.

But when I watched Howard Dean, one-time Democratic presidential hopeful, on This Week with George Stephanopolous over the weekend, I was so gratified to see him make the pitch that I think Obama and his allies need to be hammering home every time the topic comes up. It essentially goes like this:

"Are you worried about having a bureaucrat standing between you and your doctor? Are you frightened by the prospect of having your health care rationed out to you, and possibly even being denied care by some bean counter who cares nothing about whether you live or die? Are you mad as Hell at the thought of watching someone you love die while a treatment for what ails them is made available to others deemed more worthy? Well, you should be! And that's exactly what the current state of health care is in our country today, thanks to the health insurance companies and their profiteering approach to health care. So when you shout down advocates of health care reform, what you're really saying is that you want the rationing to continue, and the denials of claims, and the personal bankruptcies and the unnecessary deaths. That's what you're clamoring to keep."

It's so incredibly ironic (in a sad way) that virtually every objection to Health Care Reform that the opponents to it have lodged are actually problems with the current setup that the reformers are trying to address. Now that's some impressive misdirection!