Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post threw a fit in print yesterday over the "lies" Republicans unleashed on those watching C-SPAN Saturday night as the House worked to pass Pelosi's health-care bill. In the column, she muses with impressive intellectual nuance, "Are Republicans against figuring out what works?" and admits she's only backing Pelosi's 2,000-page regulation of 1/6 of the economy because she didn't like the way Republicans were talking about it. Trust her admittedly fickle judgment on health-care legislation at your own peril.
Her indictment of Republicans, on many points (though not all; Boehner admits a mistake on his statement, for instance), relies on the standard retort to conservative worries about the bill. "The bill language doesn't precisely say any of the stuff you say, and because I'm a liberal and therefore utterly confident in the benevolence and efficiency of the federal government in practice despite all evidence to the contrary, I can't imagine that anything unintended or bad would ever come of the measures put forth in this 2,000 page bill no one understands. You're a liar."
Here's one of the things Republicans "lied" about on Saturday:
Michigan Republican Dave Camp: "Americans could face five years in jail if they don't comply with the bill's demands to buy approved health insurance."
Not true. The bill requires people to obtain insurance or, with some hardship exceptions, pay a fine. No one is being jailed for being uninsured. People who intentionally evade paying the fine could, in theory, be prosecuted -- just like others who cheat on their taxes.
Oh, so you'll face five years in jail for refusing to pay the fine imposed upon you for choosing not to buy insurance. Well, that's totally different. Thanks, Ruth Marcus for clearing that up. I'm sure Nancy Pelosi will back you up on this very important distinction. "No one is being jailed for being uninsured," after all.
Stone: Do you think it's fair to send people to jail who don't buy health insurance?
Pelosi: … The legislation is very fair in this respect.
See the whole exchange below. Pelosi doesn't bother making the distinction without a difference that Marcus made for her. Instead, she evades and rambles about how citizens who don't buy insurance (henceforth, criminals and tax-evaders, according to the bill) will be given ample chance and subsidy to buy insurance before they are ultimately put in jail. It amounts to, "Hey, this is good for everyone, and they'd kinda of be asking for it if they didn't buy it." She had a chance to say that's not what she's doing, and she couldn't even muster a smarmy denial.
Much like the illegal immigrant coverage, abortion coverage, and the "death panel" criticisms, all of which have been proven to be distinctly unfabricated concerns during the process of bill wrangling, the idea that the new bill might send folks to jail for not buying health insurance doesn't look that crazy after all.
As Ace suggests, if you don't want to be compared to creepy statists, quit acting like creepy statists.
