Deck the Halls with Health Care Taxes
As Congress heads toward Christmas, debating an increasingly unpopular bill that will raise federal spending and taxes, Senate leaders are beating up on anyone — like Joe Lieberman — who seems to threaten quick passage of the bill. Next week, when senators want to get home for Christmas, the pressure on recalcitrant members to give in and vote will become even stronger.
And so, kids, gather around for a Christmas story from the olden days. Back in the last century, in the year 1982, the Washington establishment decided that the gasoline tax should be raised by a nickel a gallon. Ronald Reagan, Tip O’Neill, Bob Michel, Howard Baker, Bob Dole, Dan Rostenkowski — they all wanted it. But Senators Jesse Helms, Don Nickles, and Gordon Humphrey stood in the way. They filibustered right up to the night of December 23. Finally the Senate worked its will, and the tax increase passed. Helms in particular was the subject of calumny from across the Washington establishment, politicians and media alike, both for opposing a much-needed tax increase and for cruelly delaying Christmas for the senators (while trying to preserve it for the taxpayers).
And how did the voters respond to “Senator No”? In a front-page article in the Washington Post of January 2, 1983, describing Helms’s drive home on December 23 after the grueling Senate debate, David Maraniss told the story:
Hours after his fortnight battle against the gasoline tax increase was over and lost, he was bone-tired and bleary-eyed as he drove down Interstate 95, and a few times during the five-hour trip his car lurched precariously toward the shoulder of the highway. Finally, when he reached the exit for South Hill, Va., he decided to pull over and make a pit stop at Hardee’s.
No sooner had the senior senator from North Carolina approached the counter of the fast-food establishment than a truck driver recognized his unforgettable mug. “Hey, there’s Jesse Helms,” said the trucker. Heads turned, mutters of awareness filled the room, and suddenly, spontaneously, some 15 or 20 fellow travelers were on their feet applauding.
“That,” Helms would say later, “was the first time I ever got a standing ovation at Hardee’s.” In fact, it was one of the few times he had received a warm reception anywhere during December.
He had left Washington with a few more nicknames attached to him by his enemies, and even some friends, who had been frustrated by his long, and in the end unsuccessful, attempt to talk the gasoline tax increase to death. “Scrooge,” they had called him, and the “Grinch Who Almost Stole Christmas.”
Where are the senators who will suffer the obloquy of the Washington establishment this Christmas to protect the taxpayers and earn a standing ovation outside the Beltway?
Yglesias, Defending Klein’s Slander of Lieberman
Blogger Matthew Yglesias has a response to my post on Ezra Klein’s slander that Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) is okay with the mass murder (or the mass negligent homicide) of hundreds of thousands of uninsured Americans.
Yglesias claims that only one of the three studies I cited speaks to what he claims is the central point: the Institute of Medicine’s estimate of how many Americans die each year because they lack health insurance. Yglesias is incorrect. The central point/threshold question is whether giving the uninsured health insurance will save lives. All three studies speak to that point, and all three all cast doubt on the intuitively appealing idea that giving uninsured people health insurance ipso facto saves lives.
To rebut the one study that Yglesias believes to be on point (Kronick), he offers two others. Yet all studies are not created equal. Kronick, Finkelstein/McKnight, and Levy/Meltzer represent the most reliable work that has been done on the relationship between health insurance and health. If I am wrong about that, I hope that one of those authors or another expert in the field will correct me.
But if I am right, it means that Yglesias and Klein are slandering Joe Lieberman and millions of others based on their (Yglesias’ and Klein’s) limited and distorted understanding of the world. (And even if I’m wrong, the Washington Post‘s Charles Lane explains why Klein’s slander is still wrong.)
Then again, considering that Yglesias also has another post suggesting that Lieberman and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) are “dumb” Jews free-riding on the intelligence of other Jews, I’m not sure that the Church of Universal Coverage is open to persuasion right now.
Joe Lieberman, Mass Murderer?
So insinuates the Washington Post‘s Ezra Klein, who writes that, because Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) does not support the health care legislation forwarded by Senate Democrats, Lieberman “seems willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old electoral score.”
In a subsequent post, Klein relies on the Institute of Medicine’s methodology — which has been used to estimate that 22,000 Americans die each year from lack of insurance — to conclude that the Senate bill would save 150,000 lives over 10 years. He further claims that “Medicare saved lives.” (In fairness, Klein writes that he’s not accusing opponents of murder. When he writes of Lieberman’s willingness to cause hundreds of thousands of deaths, maybe he’s thinking of mass negligent homicide. Or something.)
On Twitter, Klein writes, “People are oddly resistant to talking about the impact of [health care reform] on lives. Do they think insurance has no connection to mortality?”
Indeed, health insurance does have a connection to mortality. But I’m pretty sure Klein doesn’t know what it is, mostly because people with more expertise and fewer axes to grind don’t know what it is.
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