I do not have much time for blogging today so I offer a conundrum instead. The thesis of Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America is that most Red State Americans do not understand that their economic interests are best served by the Democrats and have been fooled into voting for Republicans based on "values." The clear implication is that most Red Staters are not nearly as sophisticated in their political and economic understanding as the Bi-coastal liberal. The lowest common denominator view among those on the left is that Red State Americans are simply dumber than liberals. (The common perspective is that Conservatives are either dumb or, if they are too overtly smart, evil or venal.)
Consider these two items from Ed Morrissey this morning concerning the Democrat's "bipartisan" bill reforming healhcare that just came out of the Baucus committee:
Shell games in the Senate for ObamaCare
Recall how Democrats hailed the Baucus plan in the Senate Finance Committee for not increasing the deficit? It accomplished that by keeping scheduled cuts in Medicare reimbursement rates to providers, which will drive many of them out of the Medicare business — and Democrats know it. To correct this, Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) introduced a separate bill to increase those payments, which will cost more than $240 billion over the next ten years and substantially increase the deficit:
So, the Baucus bill saves money by cutting reimbursement to Doctors that is then restored in another bill! You really have to read Ed's entire post to appreciative the cynicism and dishonesty at work here. And then there is this:
Video: Reid dismisses $54 billion in tort-reform savings
Harry Reid struggles with math as well as with common sense in this clip from yesterday, which highlights Reid’s argument against considering tort reform as part of the overhaul of the American health-care system. Reid gets his numbers wrong, gets his scale wrong, and in the process admits that the actual cost of the Baucus plan is not $829 billion but $2 trillion:
A healthcare reform bill that does not include tort reform is a non-serious bill. Estimates are that up to 20% of Medical tests are ordered by Doctors not because we expect them to be informative but because we need to protect ourselves against potential liability suits. Again, read all of Ed's post and take note that Harry Reid inadvertently lets slip that the CBO numbers being used to tout the savings in the Baucus bill are based on smoke and mirrors disguising massive new expenses.
All in all, it leads me to wonder if the answer to Thomas Franks is another question: How stupid do they think we are?
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