Health wars

This article from the Houston Chronicle lays out the facts and myths in the current health care reform wars as well as anything I've seen on the subject so far.

The reason liberals usually lose public policy battles is that they have no propaganda machinery that comes close to the apparatus developed by conservatives since 1980 -- the days of liberal media bias are now in the distant past if they ever really existed at all. Conservatives have the motive, the means, and the opportunity to dominate the discussion of any controversial issue, and they're better at orchestrating organized campaigns using print and electronic media than liberals can ever hope to be.

For every liberal periodical ( e.g., The New Republic, The American Prospect, The Nation ), there's a conservative counterpart (The American Spectator, The Weekly Standard, National Review). Opinion pages in every major newspaper or weekly newsmagazine have at least as many conservative columnists as liberal ones. On the other hand, liberals have no tools remotely comparable to AM talk radio and Fox News Channel. Conservative commentary on talk shows is reported in the print media as legitimate news, and there are vast audiences who seem to have nothing better to do than listen to AM radio or watch cable television. If Democrats think they can compete with that, they're crazy.

Added 5:56 pm, same day: The Gallup poll results are in and it shouldn't be too surprising that many old people (the over-60s) want to slow things down and focus health care reform on cutting costs rather than expanding coverage to more people. Most old people probably have private insurance or government insurance (or both) and can afford to say, "I got mine... go fuck yourself."

Added 10:42, Wednesday 12 August: More commentary on old people from the editorial page. Sometimes I behave like a typical American geezer myself; other times, my fellow seniors just embarrass the hell outta me. Is that what they mean by dichotomy ?