The National

As the House recessed this August, they left behind one minor detail unresolved. Universal health care, once a nice tagline politician’s threw into a speech here, seems to be the closest it has been to becoming a reality. But not without the obvious opposition.

Now I don’t mind a good healthy debate, and generally I don’t take sides in “my team versus your team” politics, which it seems this topic has devolved into being. However, I find it difficult to take the middle ground on an issue such as the current health care reform bill when the arguments on the right simply aren’t true.

Take House Minority Leader John Boehner. On a Web video he parodies the old commercials where an actor proclaims that he is not a doctor, while cutting in clips of Obama’s remarks on health care.

“…Americans want lower health care costs—not a trillion-dollar government takeover of health care that increases costs and lets Washington bureaucrats make decisions that should be made by doctors and patients,” Boehner was quoted as saying in an Aug. 3 New York Times article.

Such a claim is a good example of not being entirely accurate on the issue. Most Americans are aware that, currently, decisions aren’t made between them and their doctor. It’s made by a cluster of “bureaucrats” at their insurance company who decide everything from who your doctor is to whether you’re covered at all. As for increasing costs, the problem with that statement is that there is absolutely no proof to back it up. In fact, comparing the United States to other industrialized nations, say, for example, our neighbor to the north, the costs in their single-payer systems go down.

Another problem out there seems to be the misconception that Canada has socialized medicine, as an example of a bad system. Listening to Rep. Louie Gohmert espouse such notions last month on the House floor, I wondered if he is purposely trying to mislead people or if he simply couldn’t put two brain cells together in order to look it up. Canada has a single-payer system, somewhat like what we are trying to put together here. The problem with acknowledging this is that once you realize Canada’s doctors are private parties (something the right loves) and not government employees, all the arguments about wait times and the government stepping in on your decisions go right out the door, as those have nothing to do with the government’s part in the system.

Both sides can agree that health care in America is not in good shape, the right only so far has attempted to thwart the left’s plan, while not offering any solutions of their own. Well, they do have some ideas, but they’re pretty much the same garble that Republicans have never been able to deliver in over a decade. Ideas like spending less or stopping waste, fraud and abuse. Oh and tax cuts, because those have proven to work so well in the past.

The saddest part in the whole mess is that folks seem to be buying the spin while Democrats, as usual, have trouble putting together three words to battle it. Something like the truth would suffice.