Kansas City News Blog

Health and Human Services Secretary (and former Kansas Governor) Kathleen Sebelius worked the Sunday morning talk-show circuit yesterday. The topic was health-care reform. ABC's George Stephanopoulos thinks the "news" he got out of their conversation was that "the secretary wouldn't commit to a presidential veto on health care reform legislation that adds to the federal deficit." He seemed most concerned about how Obama plans to pay for covering everyone. More helpful, however, would be some serious discussion about what exactly the administration means -- and doesn't mean -- by a "public plan."

Stephanopoulos noted that there's some congressional resistance to "any public plan" -- one in which the government would help cover people who don't have insurance.

Last week, the local Republican talking-point-trio of Reps. Roy Blunt, Sam Graves and Lynn Jenkins weighed in with an "As I See It" opinion piece in The Kansas City Star. Headlined "GOP offers constructive options to improve access to health care," the piece promised constructive conversation but offered only alarmist rhetoric that Republicans really, really want you to believe.

Oh sure, they spent the first five paragraphs sounding reasonable. But that was only a wind-up for their scary main point:

Health-care policy "expert" Sam Graves

"We are concerned about what will happen if we adopt a so-called public plan, as many Democrats are proposing. This plan is a creative name for a government takeover of our health care system and lets a bureaucrat call the shots, not your doctor."

They went on to warn against "rationing of treatment" that takes place in other countries where people have "had to wait months for live-saving treatments." In a further effort to frighten, they wrote, "Imagine a United States where bureaucrats can deny people a procedure based on economic data, not medical knowledge."

Move that sadistic "bureaucrat" from a government office to an insurance-company cube and that sounds a lot like what we've already got. But Blunt, Graves and Jenkins don't want you to think about that. They want to distract you with worry, so you don't notice that their party has absolutely nothing new to offer.

Paging Dr. Freeman!

If you are in danger of being brainwashed by fear, here's an antidote: "Health Reform and the Public Option," from the Medicine and Social Justice blog of Joshua Freeman, MD, a professor and chair of the Department of Family Medicine for the University of Kansas School of Medicine.

Dr. Freeman is becoming a regular around here, thanks to his ongoing efforts to counter the usual superficial rhetoric. The money quote from this particular installment: "There is no reason the American people need to support a plan that continues, indeed builds in as its cornerstone, the profit of insurance companies."