You can always tell when a conservative critic of Obamacare is having a significant influence on the reform debate: she will be personally attacked by the advocates of government-run health care, who will also (with their usual gift for unintentional irony) claim that she is irrelevant. Thus Ben Smith (via Sullivan) dismisses Betsy McCaughey:
Some of McCaughey’s claims have been substantially debunked, or don’t match up with the current legislation. Others are broader conservative health care critiques. In either case, she’s nowhere near the player she was in 1994.
Smith fails to provide examples of “debunked” claims, of course, and the assertion that they don’t address current legislation is ridiculous: Which of the several Dem bills are we talking about, Ben? The one specific he does mention reveals him to be hopelessly uninformed about the nuances of the health reform debate:
McCaughey made the case that American health care spending is not excessive, and that Americans spend more because we “earn more” and want more and better health care.
He dismisses this obviously accurate statement as an outlandish claim somehow peculiar to McCaughey. In fact, this view is held by numerous economists of all political persuasions. One of its most vocal proponents is none other than David Cutler, one of President Obama’s closest health care advisors:
[Cutler] says that most health-care spending is actually good. Spending has been rising, he says, because it delivers positive, and measurable, economic value, and because it can do more things that Americans want.
Smith and the usual suspects are attacking McCaughey not because she is wrong or irrelevant but because she is right and having a significant influence on the debate.
Comments 5
I don’t think “ad hominem” means what you think it means.
No one is attacking McCaughey personally, they are attacking her partisanship and debunking her patently false claims.
If someone answered Betsy’s myths by calling her a sociopath and lying, two-bit, insurance industry shill, without debunking, that’d be ad hominem.
Ms. McCaughey, or perhaps just her defenders, needs some thicker skin.
Posted 07 Oct 2009 at 12:40 pm ¶I love how you complain about “Ad Hominem” attacks on critics of proposed health care reforms, and in the first sentence refer to said reforms by the derogatory Obamacare. Classy.
Posted 07 Oct 2009 at 12:42 pm ¶The assertion above may have been true in the 70s, 80s, and to some extent the 90s, but it is no longer true. Like higher education, health care costs have risen faster and higher than wages, and most middle class families cannot afford good health insurance unless they are part of a group plan; even then, the co-insurance and co-pays are much higher than they were in the past 30 years.
Affordability is a huge issue, especially now that wages are down, unemployment is up, and health insurance premiums are at an all-time high.
We need to be realistic about the costs.
Posted 07 Oct 2009 at 1:50 pm ¶“Smith fails to provide examples of “debunked” claims”
Perhaps he expects the reader to already be familiar with the topic at hand, or to have seen the debate being critiqued. Somebody break your google button? But if you really needs some examples, you should search out Ms McCaughey’s interview/debate with Jon Stewart. Her side of the conversation devolves into making funny faces and elaborate shrugging.
But then, in a similar fashion, you provide no examples of the ad hominem attacks referred to in the headline. So there’s another topic for profitable googling for you.
Posted 09 Oct 2009 at 10:26 am ¶Er, Snertly, Jon Stewart is a comedian.
And I notice that you also failed to provide any examples of debunked McCaughey claims.
I’m waiting.
Posted 09 Oct 2009 at 6:14 pm ¶Trackbacks & Pingbacks 1
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