very Orwellian and frightening.

What do you mean?

Orwellian? How?

The adjective Orwellian describes the situation, idea, or societal condition that George Orwell identified as being destructive to the welfare of a free society. It connotes an attitude and a policy of control by propaganda, surveillance, misinformation, denial of truth, and manipulation of the past, including the "unperson" — a person whose past existence is expunged from the public record and memory, practiced by modern repressive governments.

While billed as the leftist counterweight to Charles Krauthammer or Andrew Sullivan or Ramesh Pornuru, or whomever TIME might bring on from the right, Klein is about as mushily conservative as you can be without actually getting the label. There is nothing left/liberal/progressive about him. He is as status quo as they come.

A conservative, meanwhile, can be a step & an half from a Klan meeting & be considered quite palatable.

And yet the article remains.

This year, the liberal insistence on a marginally relevant public option has been a tactical mistake that has enabled the right's "government takeover" disinformation jihad

A few sentences are well directed, even very well directed ... but to call the public option "marginally relevant"...even if you oppose it, is astonishingly confused.

The government system will not compete against insurance companies, but will eventually put them out of business. I pay a large amount of taxes as do you (and the government does a really crappy job of spending our hard earned money). I don't want to give them anymore for them to mismanage. It is that simple.
There are many other ways to assist the less fortunate and control healthcare spending than offering a government option. Tort reform, pooling association groups, allowing insurance companies to cross over state lines, not paying for illegal aliens to abuse our healthcare system, etc. A government controlled system is not the best answer......as the government does an extremely poor job of managing the programs they handle now. I don't want to be penalized (taxed) for not participating in a government run program.

Does anyone here want to help me refute these claims?

On the mark. More than "status quo", half the time he bemoans progressive changes and wishes he could roll back the clock. Sullivan, for all of his historic Tory reductionism is much more open-minded about "social progress" than the whiney and vacuous Joe "Babbit" Klein.

Well, they're self-contradictory. The government can't mismanage AND provide a service of such quality that others will flock from their private insurers to the public option. Either it will be mismanaged and nobody but the current uninsured will want it or it will be a great service that renders current private insurers obsolete.

Tort reform is absolute bullshit. It's a very small portion of costs. I think the most non-partisan accurate estimation is less than 1% of total costs.

Also as another matter of government mismanagement. American government run VA hospitals out perform their European counterparts. So we do it effectively already, and have some existing successful models in place.

What I find funny in the "don't cover illegal (brown) people" tack is the fact that an American, travelling abroad -- admitting, not quite the same thing, but in either event, you are not a citizen of the physical place in which you find yourself -- will be able to make use of hospital care & national health insurance, in the unfortunate event it is required (broken arm, ruptured spleen/appendix, whatever might befall you apart from the place of your citizenship). Somehow, the Spanish are able to endure the costs of covering Americans in their country who take ill... But heaven forfend a U.S. system in which a native passport or social security card cannot be produced but the "offending" party is still covered.

Thanks for the responses, and I hope more Obs will continue to contribute, but it just dawned on me that the core of this family member's argument is the same anti-welfare stance they've taken since I was a kid. Ideologically, they've NEVER wanted to help (regardless of the abuses of welfare) the less fortunate. I still want to argue another point so they'll at least hear something other than talking points spoon-fed to him by Fox and fellow misguided neo-con friends and relatives. But then gain, remember that you can't argue with a conservative, it just drives them to their safe belief system even further.

does your relative think that private insurance companies, which arguably add 40% to 60% of the cost of health care, are not "mismanaging"? the anti-government hysteria in this country is frightening.

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Zach, they're employed by a private insurer.

It is absolutely absurd to say that we are not currently, or will not be, a free country. And I find it pretty offensive to suggest to the contrary. We may have been in the past, but I'm not sure white america recognizes slavery or the genocide of Native Americans as oppression.
...
Take a look around the world. It was just announced that Afghanis have had their fingers chopped off for voting last week. Thousands of Iranians have been murdered, raped and tortured in the past few months. Burma. North Korea. Africa...

Think about what you're saying when you talk about oppression, because quite frankly, as white middle-aged men, we don't know shit about what it really means.

Mike, you're making my point. Look at the types of regimes in the places you mentioned. Power consolidated in one place. This is where we're headed. We may not get to that level of extreme tomorrow but it sure seems to me that that's where we're going.

I think a lot of the fear comes from recognition that they'd eagerly abuse their power, given the chance.

An facebook thread with an aquaintance of mine from private high school, a college graduate and health insurance actuary.


This is a white upper-class professional, someone you would think could inform themselves on issues rather than being spoon-fed by Fox.

I'm think that projection is a large part of what is going on in the republican party. They know what they would do to our consitution with a disciplined party, a republican president and majorities in the house and senate. And they're afraid dems will do the same to them. Unfortunately dems don't do discipline very well. I think a lot of the fear comes from recognition that they'd eagerly abuse their power, given the chance.

I think I know of the "Butthead" you're speaking of, Mike. I just stopped commenting because as you stated, he's a dining room table.