Slow-motion Takeover

E. L. Doctorow’s 1989 gangster novel Billy Bathgate, set in 1930s New York, opens with a disturbing scene: gangster Bo Weinberg has been kidnapped by his mob rival Dutch Schultz. Viciously cursing his captor, Weinberg is tied up in the cabin of a tugboat, his bare feet immobilized and immersed in a bucket of hardening cement, helplessly on his way to sleep with the fishes in Long Island Sound.

I was reminded of Bo’s sticky predicament when I heard about Congressman John Hall’s vote in favor of the government’s slow-motion takeover of the $2 trillion U.S. health care system.

Because you see, just like the cement around Bo Weinberg’s feet, the health care reform bill supported by Hall and signed into law by President Obama doesn’t go into effect immediately—it will take a while to harden. And by the time it does, there won’t be a thing any of us can do about the unimaginable consequences of this troubling legislation.

Cynically exploiting the fact that the bill will be only gradually implemented, the president was in full campaign mode the day after he signed it. As he spoke to an adoring audience in Iowa, he mocked the opposition and sought to divert attention from the nightmarish details of the bill’s 2,000 pages:

“I’m not exaggerating; the leaders of the Republican party,” Obama said, “they called the passage of this bill ‘Armageddon!’ Armageddon. End of freedom as we know it. So after I signed the bill, I looked around to see if there were any asteroids falling, or some cracks opening up in the Earth. Turned out it was a nice day . . . birds were chirping, folks were strolling down the mall, people still had their doctors.”

As the president did in Iowa, Congressman Hall on his website paints the future in rosy hues: the uninsured lame walk; the uninsured blind see; death—or at least the deficit—is vanquished:

“32 million Americans who are currently uninsured,” the congressman says, “will now have access to high quality, affordable health care. [The bill] will cut the federal deficit by $138 billion in the first ten years, and by $1.2 trillion in the second decade.” In an earlier email to me, Congressman Hall was even more expansive: “[The bill] improves health care for families who already have health insurance . . . without raising taxes on middle-class families.”

Better health care at a lower cost? Covers all the health care needs of 32 million previously uninsured people . . . and does it all at a trillion-dollar profit? You know, I’ve been around New York’s 19th district for a while, and I’ve never met anyone who appeared clueless enough to actually believe such nonsense.

After all, isn’t this the same government that gave us bankrupt Social Security, bankrupt Medicare, bankrupt Medicaid, bankrupt mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and countless other bloated, inefficient bureaucracies— all founded with similar lofty promises of a utopian heaven on earth?

For once I wish Congressman Hall would be as honest as Representative John Dingell (D-MI), who in a moment of unguarded candor spilled the beans about health care reform: “The harsh fact of the matter,” Dingell said, “is when you’re going to pass legislation that will cover 300 [million] American people ... it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.”

Ah, yes; there it is: “control the people”— starting, of course, by enlisting the ever-voracious IRS, which will be standing by to confiscate your tax refund if you refuse to buy—or can’t afford to buy—health insurance when the plan goes into effect.

Or how about former Vermont Governor Howard Dean in a recent CNBC interview: “When [a democracy] gets out of whack, as it did in the ‘20s and it has now, you need to do some redistribution. [Health care reform] is a form of redistribution.”

The redistribution has already begun, with corporations charging billions of dollars off their balance sheets to help fund the new health care system—money they would have otherwise used to buy new equipment or hire new workers.

Control the people. Redistribute wealth. That’s probably a whole lot closer to the heart of health care reform than Congressman Hall’s fantastic tale of 32 million people being added to the health care system, while simultaneously lowering the deficit.

Congressman Hall has also long contended that the status quo for health care is unsustainable and unacceptable, and must be changed. In essence: “Doing something is better than doing nothing.”

When I saw the “something” that Congressman Hall considers the fix for the unacceptable health care status quo—a 2,000-page tangle of pork, DMV-style bureaucracy and government control, I was reminded of another nautical scene—this time not in New York City harbor, with gangsters and buckets of cement, but instead featuring a wellknown comic trio.

Perhaps you remember it: the boys find themselves in a sinking rowboat, bailing feverishly but continuing to sink. Moe, the brains of the outfit, has a flash of inspiration. “Quick,” he says, “grab those drills, you numbskulls. Drill some holes and let the water out!” Larry and Curly instantly—and hilariously—obey, with the expected results.

Well, at least Larry and Curly were doing something—they were changing the status quo—just like Congressman Hall and his zany Democrat sidekicks in Washington with their slow-motion, two-thousand-page health care takeover bill.