There's an Update on Security for Biden's Gaza Port and a New 'Peacekeeping...
Biden Blows Off Respects for Murdered New York City Police Officer
New York City Councilwoman Gets Ratioed Into Oblivion Over One Question
CNBC: Voters Want Trump to Combat Runaway Inflation
Sam Bankman-Fried Sentenced in Massive Crypto Fraud Case
‘No Tampons, No Peace!’: Panic at Vanderbilt University Sit-In As Protestors Realize It...
A Massive Government Assisted Caravan Is Heading Through Mexico
Americans React to Biden Skipping Out on Slain NYPD Officer's Wake and Instead...
How Does RFK Jr. Affect This Presidential Race?
Judge In Hunter Biden's Tax Fraud Case Doesn't Buy Attorney's Claims
New Poll Shows How Hispanic Voters Feel About Biden Describing Laken Riley's Alleged...
Who Will Replace Mike Gallagher? Poll Shows It's Pro-Trump Alex Bruesewitz’s 'Race to...
Flashback: Two Cycles After Running on Gore's Ticket, Lieberman Endorses McCain at GOP...
Here's When Impeachment Articles Against Mayorkas Will Be Presented to the Senate
Tennessee Music Venue to Host ‘Trans Day Of Vengeance’ Event One Year After...
OPINION

Top Liberal Agrees: Cost of Health Reform Could Wreck Economy

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement

Startling revelations sometimes turn up in unexpected places. For instance, one of the nation's most thoughtful, influential liberals recently conceded in a New York Times book review that Democratic plans for health care reform could well wreck the U.S. economy but he insisted that the achievement would be worth the cost.

Advertisement

Arguing with Idiots By Glenn Beck

Robert Reich, who served as Bill Clinton's Labor Secretary and now teaches public policy at Berkeley, praised the new book The Heart of Power: Health and Politics in the Oval Office which described 60 years of efforts to expand the government role in medical care. Concerning authors David Blumental and James A. Morone, Reich baldly declared that their most provocative finding is that presidents who have been most successful in moving the country toward universal health coverage have disregarded or overruled their economic advisers. Plans to expand coverage have consistently drawn cautions or condemnations from economic teams in every administration, from Harry Truman's down to George W. Bush's.

Neither Reich, nor the authors he cites, chose to challenge this bipartisan consensus from both Democratic and Republican economists over some six decades. Instead, The Heart of Power highlights the shameless effort by Lyndon Johnson to conceal the true costs of Medicare in order to secure its passage in 1965. In a taped conversation with Senator Ted Kennedy, the president attacked his own economic advisors because the fools had to go to projecting those costs down the road five or six years. LBJ deliberately misled the public by lowballing the amount of money that taxpayers would need to spend to secure health coverage for senior citizens, contradicting the official economic estimates and intentionally distorting the truth. Ill spend the goddamned money, he indignantly (though privately) declared. As Secretary Reich admiringly insisted: An honest economic forecast would most likely have sunk Medicare.

Advertisement

He continued with the hugely damning admission that economists have always had a point when they cautioned against expansion of government spending for health care. Its not so much that presidential economic advisers have been wrong in fact, Medicare is well on its way to bankrupting the nation but that they are typically in the business of thinking small and trying to minimize risk, while the herculean task of expanding health coverage entails great vision and large risk. Economic advice is important, but its only one source of wisdom.

How many Americans would agree with the proposition that worrying about bankrupting the nation amounts to thinking small--- or that spending the Republic into crippling debt with no strategy for repayment amounts to great vision?

If President Obama and other advocates for sweeping health care reform are as candid as Robert Reich, the public will emphatically reject their misguided efforts to restructure one-sixth of the American economy. As history shows, deliberate distortion and understatement of costs have played an essential role in all expansions of governmental medical system entitlements. If politicians and media report honestly on the true price tag of current proposals, the people will recognize the devastating impact of such expenditures on the fragile, tentative beginnings of economic recovery. Robert Reich, Lyndon Johnson, Ted Kennedy, and Barack Obama may think its worth brutal damage to the economy to expand governmental health care but most Americans will emphatically disagree.

Advertisement

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Recommended

Trending on Townhall Videos