[from the diaries - BarbinMD]
MIKE FERGUSON: What is the proper role of government, and what are the potential impacts of the direction that we're going right now?
BLUNT: Well, you could certainly argue that government should have never have gotten in the health care business, and that might have been the best argument of all, to figure out how people could have had more access to a competitive marketplace.
Government did get into the health care business in a big way in 1965 with Medicare, and later with Medicaid, and government already distorts the marketplace.
The Eagle 93.9
Interview with Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.)
July 9, 2009
House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (Mo.) today praised President Bush’s signing of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003. With his signature, the promise of a modern Medicare is a reality for millions of seniors:
“In 1965, President Johnson signed Medicare into law, and in 2003, President Bush and Congress modernized this program that millions of seniors depend on . . . The 108th Congress put aside partisan politics and provided the president with a bill to strengthen Medicare for America’s seniors and future generations.
“And today, after years of debate and deadlock, Congress and the president delivered for today’s seniors and future generations who will rely on Medicare and prescription drugs.”
BLUNT: MODERN MEDICARE A REALITY FOR SENIORS
Press Release from Rep. Roy Blunt's office
December 8, 2003
The lying, hypocritical scumbag is right about one thing: government does distort the health care market -- by writing big fat checks to the medical-industrial complex, without imposing any real cost discipline.
Of course, having the federal government directly negotiate Medicare drug prices with Big Pharma, or including a competitive public option in the health care reform bill -- or, even better, dispensing with the "free market" charade and moving to an effective single-payer system -- would at least put a throttle on the money pipeline running from the U.S. Treasury to the health care industry's bottom line.
But we can't have that -- not when the profits of Mr. Blunt's friends, campaign contributors, ex-staffers and future employers are at stake.
A "parliament of whores" doesn't even begin to fucking cover it.
Update 12:05 AM ET: It strikes me that the dueling quotes above present, in microcosm, the brutal tragedy that passes for health care policy in this country.
Liberals want health care coverage for all -- or at least, as many as they can get -- but traditionally have cared much less about cost control. Conservatives, on the other hand, traditionally haven't given a rat's ass about universal coverage, but have been big on pinching the taxpayer's pennies (as long as those taxpayers have plenty of pennies to pinch, that is).
But today's pseudo-conservatives (i.e. the modern GOP) also don't give a rat's ass about cost control -- at least, not if it's at the expense of the powerful business interests sucking on poor Uncle Sam's withered old tits.
What's more, since Medicare feeds many of those selfsame business interests, and might even win the GOP a few votes every once in a while (think: Shrub's prescription drug boondoggle and its intended role in the 2004 congressional elections) Blunt and his fellow prostitutes will even vote for expanded benefits every once in a while (although apparently not at the moment.)
As a result, the path of least resistance for any legislative compromise (on those rare occasions when the knuckledraggers see a need to compromise) is to expand benefits without meaningful cost control, which is how Medicare -- not Social Security -- became the federal entitlement program that really is going to eat us out of fiscal house and home.
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like our latest health care reform "debate" is going to end any differently, no matter how tough progressives talk about demanding a real public option. Are they really going to hold fast when Obama caves -- as he inevitably will to avoid a Clinton-style failure -- and cut their own president, the great, um, liberal hope, off at the knees? I'm sorry, but I'll believe that when I see it, and not before.