http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/17/1352236
This interview would be one of the most informative things you read this month, for some of you, this year, and for a select few, the cereal box readers who tend to be bush voters, ever.
It's hard to even pick a part of it to post here, but I decided to post this one part about health care. There is so much more there though.
JUAN GONZALEZ: But the Republicans have been continuing to argue that the changes would allow families making as much as $83,000 a year to benefit from the program?
PAUL KRUGMAN: You know, we have a real problem here with the “L” word. That’s a lie. Just flat, it’s a lie. It’s not in the bill. I mean, there have been some proposals by some people, mostly Senator -- not “Senator,” Governor Spitzer in New York, where he’s saying, well, possibly because New York is a very expensive place, we might need to do that. But it’s not in the bill. So it’s just a pure lie, and Bush repeats it over and over again. And no reporter apparently is willing to say this is just not true. Extraordinary. But, again, a teaching moment.
This is all -- you know, in Conscience of a Liberal, I talk about this. This is really not very different from what’s happened for four years-plus. You go back to Ronald Reagan, the 1964 speech that made him a national figure, a speech on behalf of Goldwater, and the same hard-heartedness, the same -- you know, he made fun of John F. Kennedy for talking about millions of people going to bed hungry each night. And he said, “Ah, they were probably all on a diet.” That’s Reagan, 1964. Saint Ronald Reagan. It just hasn’t changed.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to play a clip of the latest ad -- this is from truemajorityaction.org -- about another child who benefited from S-CHIP. As Graeme, the twelve-year-old, was slimed, here is an ad about Bethany.
BETHANY: Hi.
ONSCREEN TEXT: “Bethany looks healthy today…but at 3 months doctors discovered she had a serious heart condition. She needed an operation to save her life. When her parents couldn’t pay for it, the government did.”
BETHANY: Yay!
ONSCREEN TEXT: “State Children’s Health Insurance (S-CHIP) keeps her healthy today. Bethany’s parents know S-CHIP works. Why doesn’t George Bush? Healthcare for 800,000 children like Bethany costs…one week in Iraq. Which one do you value more?”
BETHANY: [holding a sign that says, “Don’t veto me!”]
AMY GOODMAN: And Bethany holds up a sign that says, “Don’t veto me!” And that’s the end of the ad. Paul Krugman?
PAUL KRUGMAN: Well, I mean, this is what you need to do. It’s, again, another perfect case, and people who want to expand children's health insurance are using this. And, of course, National Review has an article out there saying, well, this is another -- you know, that she doesn’t deserve it, or rather the family doesn’t deserve it because her mother once had a job that had health insurance and she quit it, and then she had a baby -- of course, seven years later. And, you know, it’s incredible. But this is -- you know, but this is actually what’s different -- these are actually not that different from stories we’ve seen for decades, the sliming and the whole attacks -- this is standard operating procedure. What’s new is that you’ve got an effective progressive movement that is fighting back and is managing to basically catch them in the act and turn it against them.
AMY GOODMAN: Paul Krugman, you write in your book, Conscience of a Liberal, about the moment that, well, the US could have adopted single-payer back in Truman's time.
PAUL KRUGMAN: That’s right.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain the history.
PAUL KRUGMAN: OK, it’s -- you know, right at the time just -- time of the New Deal, the time when all advanced countries were building a basic set of social insurance programs, the natural thing was to include some kind of healthcare. And actually FDR thought of including health insurance in Social Security, but decided that was one step too far politically, so didn’t go that far. And right after World War II, Harry Truman wanted to have national health insurance, which made perfect sense and would have been at that point -- that was a good moment. The insurance lobby wasn’t the monster it is today. The drug lobby didn’t exist. You know, all the things that stand in the way.
But it failed. And it failed because the opposition of the American Medical Association, which has been a constant throughout this. But it failed crucially because Southern whites said, no, this will lead to integrated hospitals, and we won’t let it happen, which is -- they were probably right. When Medicare came in -- and one of the reasons they were bitterly opposed to Medicare was they were afraid it would integrate their hospitals, and it did. But it’s -- you know, you go through US history, try to understand US political history, and race always comes back, and even the rise of the conservative movement in the Republican Party, the victories. It’s almost embarrassing. I talk a lot to political scientists, and you go through the numbers and the polls, and it all boils down -- almost everything else goes away, except for five words: Southern whites started voting Republican. The backlash against the Civil Rights Movement explains almost everything that’s happened in this country for the past forty-five years.
This interview would be one of the most informative things you read this month, for some of you, this year, and for a select few, the cereal box readers who tend to be bush voters, ever.
It's hard to even pick a part of it to post here, but I decided to post this one part about health care. There is so much more there though.
JUAN GONZALEZ: But the Republicans have been continuing to argue that the changes would allow families making as much as $83,000 a year to benefit from the program?
PAUL KRUGMAN: You know, we have a real problem here with the “L” word. That’s a lie. Just flat, it’s a lie. It’s not in the bill. I mean, there have been some proposals by some people, mostly Senator -- not “Senator,” Governor Spitzer in New York, where he’s saying, well, possibly because New York is a very expensive place, we might need to do that. But it’s not in the bill. So it’s just a pure lie, and Bush repeats it over and over again. And no reporter apparently is willing to say this is just not true. Extraordinary. But, again, a teaching moment.
This is all -- you know, in Conscience of a Liberal, I talk about this. This is really not very different from what’s happened for four years-plus. You go back to Ronald Reagan, the 1964 speech that made him a national figure, a speech on behalf of Goldwater, and the same hard-heartedness, the same -- you know, he made fun of John F. Kennedy for talking about millions of people going to bed hungry each night. And he said, “Ah, they were probably all on a diet.” That’s Reagan, 1964. Saint Ronald Reagan. It just hasn’t changed.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to play a clip of the latest ad -- this is from truemajorityaction.org -- about another child who benefited from S-CHIP. As Graeme, the twelve-year-old, was slimed, here is an ad about Bethany.
BETHANY: Hi.
ONSCREEN TEXT: “Bethany looks healthy today…but at 3 months doctors discovered she had a serious heart condition. She needed an operation to save her life. When her parents couldn’t pay for it, the government did.”
BETHANY: Yay!
ONSCREEN TEXT: “State Children’s Health Insurance (S-CHIP) keeps her healthy today. Bethany’s parents know S-CHIP works. Why doesn’t George Bush? Healthcare for 800,000 children like Bethany costs…one week in Iraq. Which one do you value more?”
BETHANY: [holding a sign that says, “Don’t veto me!”]
AMY GOODMAN: And Bethany holds up a sign that says, “Don’t veto me!” And that’s the end of the ad. Paul Krugman?
PAUL KRUGMAN: Well, I mean, this is what you need to do. It’s, again, another perfect case, and people who want to expand children's health insurance are using this. And, of course, National Review has an article out there saying, well, this is another -- you know, that she doesn’t deserve it, or rather the family doesn’t deserve it because her mother once had a job that had health insurance and she quit it, and then she had a baby -- of course, seven years later. And, you know, it’s incredible. But this is -- you know, but this is actually what’s different -- these are actually not that different from stories we’ve seen for decades, the sliming and the whole attacks -- this is standard operating procedure. What’s new is that you’ve got an effective progressive movement that is fighting back and is managing to basically catch them in the act and turn it against them.
AMY GOODMAN: Paul Krugman, you write in your book, Conscience of a Liberal, about the moment that, well, the US could have adopted single-payer back in Truman's time.
PAUL KRUGMAN: That’s right.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain the history.
PAUL KRUGMAN: OK, it’s -- you know, right at the time just -- time of the New Deal, the time when all advanced countries were building a basic set of social insurance programs, the natural thing was to include some kind of healthcare. And actually FDR thought of including health insurance in Social Security, but decided that was one step too far politically, so didn’t go that far. And right after World War II, Harry Truman wanted to have national health insurance, which made perfect sense and would have been at that point -- that was a good moment. The insurance lobby wasn’t the monster it is today. The drug lobby didn’t exist. You know, all the things that stand in the way.
But it failed. And it failed because the opposition of the American Medical Association, which has been a constant throughout this. But it failed crucially because Southern whites said, no, this will lead to integrated hospitals, and we won’t let it happen, which is -- they were probably right. When Medicare came in -- and one of the reasons they were bitterly opposed to Medicare was they were afraid it would integrate their hospitals, and it did. But it’s -- you know, you go through US history, try to understand US political history, and race always comes back, and even the rise of the conservative movement in the Republican Party, the victories. It’s almost embarrassing. I talk a lot to political scientists, and you go through the numbers and the polls, and it all boils down -- almost everything else goes away, except for five words: Southern whites started voting Republican. The backlash against the Civil Rights Movement explains almost everything that’s happened in this country for the past forty-five years.
