Neocomrade F. Hiatt on Taxpayer-Funded Medicine

Because the profounder interests of The Demographic, ‘existential’ or this-worldly, are not obviously at stake in the current troubles, Master Freddy of Fox-on-Fifteenth-Street™ manages to be almost glacially detached about Governess S. Heath-Paling’s trendy brand of thanatopsis. And about all the rest of it as well.

I think that's what is goin’ on here, Dr. Bones, but there may also be a certain underdoggism vis-à-vis the New York Times Company left over from when the Baní WaPo used to be liberals and democrats and Democrats. Nitsy herself happens to be in an Eleanor Roosevelt frame of mind for the nonce-- "it is easy to lose sight of the human dimensions of the crisis" and so on. Maybe we can talk about that later on or separately. But we must begin with Freddy, who lays it all out on the gurney with impeccable detachment. Nothin’ here to indicate that F. Hiatt belongs to the human race himself.

Broadly speaking, there are three sides to the debate ... (1) Advocates of universal access, mostly liberal Democrats, can explain why everyone, even the insured, should be on their side ... (2) Then there's the Bend the Curve Camp, the Blue Dog Democrats and deficit hawks in the administration and the Senate for whom health reform is a way to control costs ... (3) [T]hose [militant extremist Republicans] who do put forward ideas mostly belong in the Let the Market Work Camp, the idea being that if consumers could see the true costs of their health care, they would make wiser decisions.

Before I pick on Master Freddy's preferred nonsolution, sir, I would have you decide for yourself about that tripartition. As often happens, it collapses into a bipartition under slight pressure. The first pigeon-hole contains all us "reactionary liberal" bird brains who don't worry about meetin’ payrolls and gratifyin’ our betters of the Concord Coalition the way every rational creature damnwell ought to. (2) and (3), by contrast, form a sort of Fiscal Responsibility Suite, with only a gauzy curtain, not a brick firewall, between those who admit that Public Administration might conceivably help control costs and those true believers who do not.

A guesser could have guessed in advance that Master Freddy would locate himself in the middle of the road, without even knowing what road it is. And that is just where the Washin’ton Neotimes has been editorializin’ from for quite a while now, even though Freddy, writin’ under his own name here, does not remind us of it, or award a gilded apple to any of his pulchritudinous competitors. I.e., Mr. Hiatt is a left-wing plutocrat, a demoplutocrat of that thoroughly orthodox holy-Homelandic™ school that has never understood why The Market should not accept the occasional favor from Uncle Sam. Or, indeed, lots of favors all the time. If land grants for railroads, why not policyholder grants for insurance corporations?

Even here there are faint signs that this neocomrade thinks demoplutocratic true believers who wander off lustin’ after Miss Rand of Petersburg and Mr. Nozick of H*rv*rd and the more steel-claptrap-minded Chicagonomists are a bit infra dig.:

It almost gives them too much credit to put Republicans in any camp, because many of them have decided that their best strategy is to hang back and carp.

That seems to mean that Master Freddy was tempted to erect a conceptual ghetto or ghettino out on the far side of "the Let the Market Work Camp," a "The Market Has ALREADY Worked Perfectly" camp, as it were, in which to concentrate those of his neocomrades who rush to unseemly economic extremes. Since Freddy himself has been degeneratin’ from left to right, it is natural enough that he still finds that crew a bit much for his taste and decided to expunge them from his classification. [1]

There may even be five pigeon camps here: the three enumerated, a camp labeled "Whatever Sells, Is RIGHT!" as just outlined, and yet another that would cater directly to Master Freddy’s "middle class," the pigeons who possess health insurance policies at the moment (and tell that nice Dr. Rasmussen they love them dearly whenever he calls), but who may nevertheless be unpleasantly surprised should they ever need to convert them into medical attention. President Summers and Mr. Obama have shown signs in the last couple of days of zeroing in on that group, which would be an excellent idea no matter whether it ever crossed the WaPo/Hiattoid corporate mind. In fact it looks as if it did cross and promptly got slapped down:

[T]he administration has shifted to calling its program health insurance reform, and implying that one of its big advantages will be to pry annoying claims adjusters off everyone's back. This was never the main point, and in a world of controlling costs, those adjusters aren't going away. But it's one of the misdirections of August.

To translate that as "Freddy is not interested" may be incomplete, but it seems accurate as far as it goes. You can safely take for granted, Dr. Bones, that Neocomrade F. Hiatt is (A) not worried personally about his own medical arrangements, (B) not heavily invested in drug companies or insurance companies or even in the historic lustre of the Republican Party and the American medical profession, and (C) not exactly Florence Nightingale when it comes to his inferiors’ portfolios and pancreases. "I'm all right, Jack," says Freddy.

Freddy’s is not a genuinely Martian impartiality, no doubt, but I betcha Jack, whoever he is, would find it hard to tell the difference.

As to that ‘nonsolution’ I promised you above, sir, looking back through the wilderness I cannot make out that there is any. But then, given Master Freddy's modus operandi, why should there be? For reasons of publicism and politics, mostly publicism, a demoplutocratic señorito cannot just deny there is any problem. But havin' acknowledged the existence of a problem is as far as he absolutely needs to go, and accordin’ly that is where Freddy stops.

Hiattstán, you see, Dr. Bones, is not unlike the Department of Wehrner von Braun.

Happy days.

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[1] Q. Then why mention them at all?

A. Not a hard question: Master Freddy does not wish to be recognized as a neocomrade. His influence and his organ’s would drop steeply if they did not keep on bein’ accounted liberal and democratic and Democratic by the sheer inertia of other people's minds. Hence an indication that there may actually still exist des enemis à gauche props up that inertia and wards off the dreadful Day of Reckonin’ when pretty well everybody will think "Fox on Fifteenth Street" whenever they hear about Fred Hiatt’s latest.

But you will notice, Dr. Bones, that he carefully does not say anythin’ the least bit offensive about the zealots for Political Capitalism. "[T]heir best strategy is to hang back and carp" makes it sound as if Freddy disagrees with his more vigorous neocomrades only because they are more devoted than he is to the Party of Grant and Hoover and Goldwater and Atwater quâ institutional Party. As long as Freddy can get his demoplutocratic fix, he does see any reason to insist that there be a picture of an elephant on the needle.

It is (perhaps) faintly hinted in this scribble that after the hangers-back and carpers have brough their POTUS to his Waterloo, some sort of ‘reasonable’ or ‘moderate’ neocomradely consensus will arise to make "consumers ... see the true costs of their health care" and do about it what the Washington Post Company wants them to do about it -- mainly smashin’ Social Security and scrappin’ Medicare. To the extent that Master Freddy cares about such dismal science stuff seriously, his heart and his hormones are no doubt with the Concord Coalition. But as I said at the outset, Dr. Bones, the cause of The Demographic does not seem to most of its partisans to have a great deal to do with the condition of medical and pharmaceutical and insurance corporations in central North America.

You or I can imagine a linkage without too much effort, sir, -- say, money wasted on pensions and public health in the holy Homeland™ must (?) mean fewer resources will be available for invasions and occupations and whatnot overseas. If Neocomrade F. Hiatt thinks any thoughts like those, however, he covers them up admirably. I'd guess he does not think any, myself, and just has a mild sentimental/ideological preference for the Concord Coalition sentimentalities. Not far from his Uncle Polonius and "Neither a borrower nor a lender be" is Master Freddy, me judice.

But Father Zeus knows best.