Letter to the Editor: Support for healthcare reform

I could easily use broad, unsubstantiated labels to demonize J.D. Griffin’s argument in Monday’s column, “Fighting The Socialist Agenda.”

I could quote Alexander Hamilton or Ben Franklin to imply that his opinion is subverting the will of the Founding Fathers.

I could create wild, slippery-slope syllogisms to make him look radical and sinister.

I could easily do all of the things J.D. Griffin did in his column, but I won’t, because I’m too thoughtful for that.

I recognize that the complexities of governing a nation, a state, or even a university are too great to reduce to name-calling.

So let’s drop the demagoguery and discuss our differences for what they are: reasonable policy disagreements.

I’ll start.

I support the new healthcare reform law because I believe that everybody deserves access to healthcare, regardless of wealth, employment, or prior health conditions.

The law will increase affordability through increased competition among private insurers and subsidies or tax credits for low-income families and small businesses.

Nobody will be able to be denied health insurance because of pre-existing conditions or lifetime expenditure limits.

It addresses our long-term cost liabilities by slowing the increase of healthcare costs and efficiency in Medicare and Medicaid, and it is paid for by reasonable, targeted tax increases that will reduce our federal deficit by an estimated $1.38 trillion over the next two decades.

All of these things I support, as do a majority of the House of Representatives, a supermajority of the Senate, and the President of the United States.

I respect the right of J.D. Griffin and others to disagree, even on the premise that healthcare reform is an act of “government oppression.

If I were to invoke the Founders, it would only be to say that they foresaw such policy disagreements and created a way to resolve them. It’s called voting.

That is what I will do to “help save our republic.”

Jake McGraw
Senior
Public Policy Leadership, Economics