Jonathan Cohn, who does most of The New Republic’s health policy writing, was once an honest man. He was, being a “progressive,” usually wrong on health care. But, before Barack Obama became President, you could usually count on Cohn to tell the truth.
Sadly, those days are gone. Cohn has devolved into just another partisan hack parroting the party line. The latest evidence of his fall can be found in this deliberately deceptive piece on Donald Berwick, Obama’s nominee for CMS administrator:
He’s a socialist! He’ll redistribute wealth … That’s what Republicans said about President Barack Obama … Now they’re saying it about Donald Berwick …
In other words, those evil Republicans are misrepresenting Berwick’s positions. But, if you take a look at a few of Berwick’s public statements on health care, it’s obvious that they aren’t distorting his record at all. Here’s what he has said on wealth redistribution:
Any healthcare funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized and humane, must redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate.
It’s pretty difficult (for an honest man fluent in English) to avoid the conclusion that Berwick is for redistribution. I mean, he SAYS he’s for redistribution. And who but a socialist would say the following about a socialized medical system (Britain’s crumbling NHS)?
I am romantic about the National Health Service; I love it … All I need to do to rediscover the romance is to look at healthcare in my own country.
So, the man says he’s thinks a health care system should be used for wealth redistribution and he “loves” the most socialized (and least efficient) medical system in the developed world (he also talks of leading health care out of “the darkness of private enterprise”).
Yet, Cohn tells us the GOP is engaging in demagoguery when they call him what he proudly calls himself. The dishonesty here isn’t coming from the GOP. Cohn is, like some apparatchik at Pravda, deliberately producing a misleading version of the debate over Berwick’s nomination.
As Berwick’s confirmation hearings approach, Cohn will be joined by may other “journalists” in the project of whitewashing Berwick’s record. But facts are stubborn things, even in our increasingly Orwellian political discourse.
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