Health care law stands up well to GOP propaganda

Ray A. Cohn, Las Vegas

Tuesday, April 5, 2011 | 2:05 a.m.

President Barack Obama last year managed to push through Congress the first real health care reform since Medicare in 1965.

But the health care insurance industry, others with a vested interest and their Republican allies spread numerous falsehoods about Obama’s plan and managed to score major political points.

These lies include claims that the plan is socialized medicine, includes death panels and is a government takeover of medicine.

Republican claims about the Obama plan reflect what we have now. We pay twice as much for health care as the rest of the industrial world, but rank 37th in quality. We have 50 million uninsured. Forty thousand people a year die because of lack of coverage.

Unfortunately, the corporate press in general no longer challenges myths spread by corporations.

Fortunately, as Abe Lincoln said, you can’t fool people all of the time. Here is where Obama called the GOP bluff. He told the governors at a recent meeting that if they can come up with a better health care system that covers as many people at the same or cheaper cost and is just as affordable, then they can do so.

Republican governors have no such plan, but this gives Democratic governors and state legislatures the flexibility to improve the Obama plan. In Vermont, Gov. Peter Shumlin ran on a platform to enact a single-payer system. It was passed by the Vermont House and has a good chance to pass the Vermont Senate.