A reader responds:
In your Feb. 1 post, you claim that Rep. Price’s authored bill, H.R. 3400, is “the Republican proposal” for health care reform. It’s one of several that has been sponsored by Republicans, and most importantly isn’t the one that made headlines this fall from such a “grim” CBO review. That bill was H.R. 4038. Your post misleads your readers and implies that: there has only been one Republican proposal, and that this is it. Maybe you made an honest mistake, but words are important and your biases rarely hide themselves. In your words, I look forward to you correcting the record.
First of all, I always love when someone tells me my “biases rarely hide themselves” – as if they’ve caught me trying to hide my preference for a single payer health care system. Or my disdain for rhetoric. Or my impatience with politics over policy.
Let me say it for the zillionth time. It’s not hidden. I think that the available data and evidence show that such a system would be much more cost-effective. I think that the media (and others) have done a terrible job of describing the details of proposed policy. I think that too many people want reform to succeed or fail only because they want Democrats or Republicans to “win” or “lose”. Even worse, I think that some people want it to succeed or fail merely because of personal feelings for politicians, which is so petty it makes me sad.
If you think I’ve got some other “bias”, please do let me know. I’ll address it here, in the open. I’ve got nothing to hide.
As to the idea that HR3400 is not “the Republican proposal”, it’s the one that Rep. Price was talking about when he spoke to President Obama. It’s the one he said had more co-sponsors than any other health care reform bill in the house. It still doesn’t.
Although it does have more co-sponsors than HR4038, which has only 23.
But if it makes this reader feel good, then I will say – again – that there has been more than one proposal. I have talked about them in a number of posts.
None of this changes the fact that the health care reform bill with the largest number of co-sponsors is HR676 – Medicare for all.
