The Opinion Pages | OP-ED COLUMNIST

Understanding Republican Cruelty

Paul Krugman

JUNE 30, 2017

The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, is having a hard time
selling his health insurance plan. Credit Eric Thayer for The New York
Times The basics of Republican health legislation, which haven¹t
changed much in different iterations of Trumpcare, are easy to
describe: Take health insurance away from tens of millions, make it
much worse and far more expensive for millions more, and use the money
thus saved to cut taxes on the wealthy.

Donald Trump may not get this ‹ reporting by The Times and others,
combined with his own tweets, suggests that he has no idea what¹s in
his party¹s legislation. But everyone in Congress understands what
it¹s all about.

The puzzle ‹ and it is a puzzle, even for those who have long since
concluded that something is terribly wrong with the modern G.O.P. ‹ is
why the party is pushing this harsh, morally indefensible agenda.

Think about it. Losing health coverage is a nightmare, especially if
you¹re older, have health problems and/or lack the financial resources
to cope if illness strikes. And since Americans with those
characteristics are precisely the people this legislation effectively
targets, tens of millions would soon find themselves living this
nightmare.

Meanwhile, taxes that fall mainly on a tiny, wealthy minority would be
reduced or eliminated. These cuts would be big in dollar terms, but
because the rich are already so rich, the savings would make very
little difference to their lives.

More than 40 percent of the Senate bill¹s tax cuts would go to people
with annual incomes over $1 million ‹ but even these lucky few would
see their after-tax income rise only by a barely noticeable 2 percent.

So it¹s vast suffering ‹ including, according to the best estimates,
around 200,000 preventable deaths ‹ imposed on many of our fellow
citizens in order to give a handful of wealthy people what amounts to
some extra pocket change. And the public hates the idea: Polling shows overwhelming popular opposition, even though many voters don¹t realize
just how cruel the bill really is. For example, only a minority of
voters are aware of the plan to make savage cuts to Medicaid.

In fact, my guess is that the bill has low approval even among those
who would get a significant tax cut. Warren Buffett has denounced the
Senate bill as the ³Relief for the Rich Act,² and he¹s surely not the
only billionaire who feels that way.

Which brings me back to my question: Why would anyone want to do this?

I won¹t pretend to have a full answer, but I think there are two big
drivers ‹ actually, two big lies ‹ behind Republican cruelty on health
care and beyond.

First, the evils of the G.O.P. plan are the flip side of the virtues
of Obamacare. Because Republicans spent almost the entire Obama
administration railing against the imaginary horrors of the Affordable
Care Act ‹ death panels! ‹ repealing Obamacare was bound to be their
first priority.

Once the prospect of repeal became real, however, Republicans had to
face the fact that Obamacare, far from being the failure they
portrayed, has done what it was supposed to do: It used higher taxes
on the rich to pay for a vast expansion of health coverage.
Correspondingly, trying to reverse the A.C.A. means taking away health
care from people who desperately need it in order to cut taxes on the
rich.

So one way to understand this ugly health plan is that Republicans,
through their political opportunism and dishonesty, boxed themselves
into a position that makes them seem cruel and immoral ‹ because they
are.

Yet that¹s surely not the whole story, because Obamacare isn¹t the
only social insurance program that does great good yet faces incessant right-wing attack. Food stamps, unemployment insurance, disability
benefits all get the same treatment. Why?


As with Obamacare, this story began with a politically convenient lie
‹ the pretense, going all the way back to Ronald Reagan, that social
safety net programs just reward lazy people who don¹t want to work.
And we all know which people in particular were supposed to be on the
take.

Now, this was never true, and in an era of rising inequality and
declining traditional industries, some of the biggest beneficiaries of
these safety net programs are members of the Trump-supporting white
working class. But the modern G.O.P. basically consists of career
apparatchiks who live in an intellectual bubble, and those Reagan-era stereotypes still dominate their picture of struggling Americans.

Or to put it another way, Republicans start from a sort of baseline of
cruelty toward the less fortunate, of hostility toward anything that
protects families against catastrophe.

In this sense there¹s nothing new about their health plan. What it
does ‹punish the poor and working class, cut taxes on the rich ‹ is
what every major G.O.P. policy proposal does. The only difference is
that this time it¹s all out in the open.

So what will happen to this monstrous bill? I have no idea. Whether it
passes or not, however, remember this moment. For this is what modern Republicans do; this is who they are.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on June 30, 2017, on Page A27
of the New York edition with the headline: Understanding Republican
Cruelty.

© The New York Times Company 2017
——————————————————————————————

So what are the lessons for New Zealand? Well, we dont have a lunatic
'like Trump and the far-right Republicans in charge, but the aims and objectives of our government are very similar - they are doing the
same punish the poor to give a tax benefit to the wealthy. They have
already dropped tax rates (proportionately more for the wealthy than
for the poor, with GST causing many to be worse off), but just look at
what they are doing with health!

First they are not honest about what they are really doing: https://pro.newsroom.co.nz/articles/1857-government-knew-of-dhb-blunder-before-budget
and http://www.union.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Did-the-Budget-provide-enough-for-Health-2017.pdf
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/334237/health-budget-falls-215m-short-unions-say
http://www.radionz.co.nz/programmes/brighter-future/story/201848039/brighter-future-the-faces-of-mental-health

and as part of that budget, the government finally after 5 years of
fighting lost a pay claim - so what have they done about that? https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2017/06/29/36691/pay-equity-deals-missing-millions

Notice the claims thrughout all of this from Coleman and National that
they are improving services not running them down - that the money
will be there (too late for at least two [providers - they've already
gone out of buisness)

The combined articles (and particularly the very persuasive academic
analysis by the CTU) demonstrates that National are making deliberate
decisions to run services down. In another thread we saw that
operations for cochlear implants are being rationed - that has already
happened to other operations - the government wants people to take out
private health insurance to reduce government spending.

The heartlessness of National is no less than that of the Republicans
- its just more insidious and hiden by lies, obfuscation, attempts to
hide statistics, and more lies.

There is no excuse for not providing basic health services that ensure
that people can lead productive (and tax-paying!) lives. National just
doesn't care. Coleman has forgotten the hypocratic oath - he just
offers hypocrisy.

Time for a change.

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