Our very own Kevin Brady has become a sort of a celebrity in right-wing-nuttery world of late. The Congressman's staff has developed a "Flow Chart" that purports to demonstrate the health care system that is proposed by bills in Congress. It has spread like wildfire throughout the right-wing blogosphere and of course, Fixed News. Because the chart contains so many exaggerations that are misleading, the House Franking Committee initially refused to grant Brady and other representatives permission to distribute it via mail as official congressional correspondence. However, they are now allowing it to go out and I'm sure we'll all be seeing it in our mailboxes soon. Salon.com recently published an analysis of this hilarious prop:
Supposedly depicting how a new system would be organized, this drawing shows more than 50 multicolored boxes, circles and cartoon pictures, connected by red and blue arrow vectors. According to Rep. Kevin Brady, the Texas Republican who distributed it, the chart displays the "new levels of bureaucracy, agencies, organization and programs [that] will all be put directly between the patient and their healthcare."
That is simply a lie, as Brady surely knows, since none of the Obama administration's proposals or the Democratic bills would interpose any federal agency between patients and doctors -- or between consumers and insurers -- for those who are satisfied with their current plans. Examined closely, most of the items on the chart, including several Cabinet departments and federal agencies, as well as "the States" and "Consumers" and "Private Insurers," already exist, of course. It is hard to say what the GOP drawing can actually be said to show except that American healthcare is already complicated. Much more complicated than systems in other countries, such as France, Germany, Sweden, Norway and Japan, that rely on public as well as private insurance plans to achieve universal coverage.
The chart accomplishes its goal. It provides the shock value needed to reinforce the beliefs of the hard right wingers and it scares the bejesus out of middle of the road voters who've yet to develop an opinion but are certainly feeling the anti-reform pressure in one of the reddest counties in Texas. It doesn't have to be accurate, it just needs to be complex-looking and colorful. Just enough to make the point that Obama and the Democrats are just salivating over new bureaucracies that will drain our deficit further in order to give jobs to poor government workers (Democrats) and healthcare to illegal immigrants (also Democrats voting fraudulently). The Republicans don't need a plan of their own, they just have to keep saying NO to ours.
The larger point is missed with this chart. We deal with bigger bureaucracies today! They're called private insurance companies and unlike the federal system, their bureaucracy is designed to deny coverage and make huge profits at the expense of the lives of their policy holders. The reality is that running any large enterprise isn't as simple as running a lemonade stand. It requires a variety of functions that work collaboratively together and provide checks and balances to ensure success. Do you think the organizational chart at General Electric consists of two boxes and a straight line? Of course not, because General Electric is a mega corporation and their ability to provide products and services is a complicated venture. Just like providing health insurance to millions of Americans will be a very complicated venture.
Kevin Brady pushing his baby on Fixed News.
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