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The Medicare-Isn't-Government MemeHelp Slate track the spread of this big-lie talking point against health reform.

By Timothy NoahPosted Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2009, at 2:04 PM ET

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"Keep your government hands off my Medicare." It was funny the first two or three times this angry citizen's cry against health reform got repeated—Medicare, you may have heard, is a government program, and the only way to take the government's hands off it would be to abolish it—but the joke is starting to wear thin.

The New Republic's health care blog, The Treatment, points out that during the Hillarycare battle back in 1994, then-Sen. John Breaux, a Louisiana Democrat, was accosted at the airport by an elderly constituent. "Now don't you let the government get a hold of my Medicare," she said. Writing in The System, Haynes Johnson and David Broder related Breaux's criminally disingenuous response: "Oh, no, we won't let the government touch your Medicare." In a similar vein, supply-side economist Arthur Laffer recently complained on CNN, "If you like the Post Office and the Department of Motor Vehicles and you think they're run well, just wait till you see Medicare, Medicaid, and health care done by the government." (Medicaid is also a government program, financed jointly by federal and state government.) If there is a hell for libertarian poseurs, Laffer has secured himself a berth in it.

The big lie that Medicare isn't, nor ever should be, financed and regulated by the government, is a nice illustration of Slate founder Michael Kinsley's hypothesis, articulated in his 1995 book Big Babies, that infantile denial lies at the heart of much contemporary political disaffection. The American people, Kinsley wrote, "make flagrantly incompatible demands—cut my taxes, preserve my benefits, balance the budget—then explode in self-righteous outrage when the politicians fail to deliver." Although Kinsley conceded that big babyism had been enabled by both conservative and liberal politics, he wrote: "It is conservatives, more than liberals, who stoke the fires of resentment and encourage vast swaths of the electorate to indulge in fantasies of victimization by others." This is perhaps 1,000 times more true today than it was 14 years ago.

To combat the pernicious and big-babyish meme that Medicare lies beyond government control and must remain so, Slate will keep a running inventory of instances in which people who should know better, like Laffer and Breaux, encourage the public to believe such arrant nonsense.* Perhaps the mere establishment of this inventory will prevent conservative demagogues from adding to it. Perhaps it won't. If it doesn't, please notify Slate by e-mailing . E-mails should bear the subject line, "Medicare isn't government" and should provide a link to the source. Past instances (like Breaux's) are eligible. Deceitful right-wing panderers, beware. We're listening.

Correction, Aug. 7, 2009: An earlier version of this column referred to "errant nonsense." This was incorrect (one might even say errant) usage. The author meant "arrant." (Return to the corrected sentence.)

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Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.

COMMENTS

Aside from the delusion that Medicare is not a government program, has Arthur Laffer been to the DMV lately...or gotten his mail.

My mail arrives daily, often forwarded accurately, while sending letters across a rather large country still costs 1/3 of what it does in smaller countries, and arrives with great reliability.

Recently, moreover, I had to register a car and get a license, in California (every libertarians' favorite dystopia). I was able to make an appointment, and was in and out in about an hour, with only a few minutes spent waiting in line. Doing the same, about two years ago in New Jersey, was even quicker, and the employees practically fell over one another to be helpful. (This was a change, admittedly, from the neo-Stalinesque conditions in 2002 in New Jersey, but remember: the state had a long run of Republican governors in the 90s, and it took a few years of Democrats to repair the damage, I guess).

Compared to the nightmare of dealing with my health insurer (when I was off Kaiser for a year, recently), the Post Office and DMV were absolutely a pleasure: people were friendly and helpful and it went quickly with no errors. What's to complain about?

-- PQuincy
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