Going too far for O'Reilly is going very far indeed,but the madness of the conservative reaction has yet to abate. His friend andcolleague Glenn Beck declared that health care reform means "the end ofprosperity in America forever… the end of Americaas you know it."
Bill Hemmer, another FOX host who probably needsmedication, has suggested that the legislation will send Americans who don'thave health insurance to prison. TheWashington Times editorial page compared the bill to the Black Plague, andthe Drudge Report put up a headline suggesting that its passage is theequivalent of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
On the radio, Rush Limbaugh, the past master ofextremist chatter, told his listeners that the bill is an "utterdisaster" that represents "the destruction of America asfounded." With its new regulation of insurance companies, he warned, thisreform will inexorably lead to the destruction of the private health careindustry and bring down the health care system, because the real plan is forgovernment to take over all medical care. Lesser wingnuts in print and on theair scream that this bill means government will take over the entire economyand control everything we doand even that the costs of health care willsomehow result in "global Armageddon."
Stirring up such lunacy almost worked for theRepublicans, who came close to stopping health care reform again. Each episodeof reform versus reaction has seen them go further and further in falsehood anddemagoguery, and each time they have prevailed until now. But this time, withreform signed into law, they may suffer the consequences, when their own liescome around to hit them like a boomerang.
Seeing Through the Lies
Health care reform isn't socialism (just ask the oldSocialist Party USA, which has denounced the bill for that very reason). Itisn't the end of the world, the destruction of the American system or the ruinof democratic capitalism. It won't mean that government is taking over thehealth care system. It isn't going to send anyone to prison or arraign elderlypatients in front of "death panels."
Over the next six months, millions of voters willtake a deep breath and realize that those attacks were blatantly untrue. Theymay even discover that the bill passed by the Democrats and signed by PresidentObama will benefit their families immediately.
Although many of the bill's most significant changeswill not become effective until 2014, several important reforms will takeeffect this year. Insurance companies will be prohibited from their notoriouspractice of dropping coverage of people who get sick. Their rules on lifetimelimits will be eliminated, and their limits on annual coverage will beliberalized.
Insurers will no longer be permitted to excludechildren from coverage because of pre-existing conditions. And uninsured adultswho have pre-existing conditions that prevented them from obtaining insurancewill get coverage from a special risk pool that will end when the new insuranceexchangeswhere private companies will competego into operation a few yearsfrom now. A similar program will cover early retirees who are too young toqualify for Medicare, assisting companies in turning over their workforce andcreating jobs.
The bill also closes the infamous "doughnuthole" that the Republicans created when they wrote the Medicare Part Ddrug coverage bill. Patients who fall into that gap will receive a $250 rebateright away, and the hole will eventually be closed completely.
Limbaugh listeners and FOX fans will stick theirfingers in their ears and scream "socialism," but the rest of Americamay listenand then decide, sometime between now and Election Day, that passinghealth care reform was the right thing to do.
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