New York Times Magazine has a pretty revealing--and entertaining--profile of Dick Armey, the former Republican House majority leader who now chairs Freedom Works, a conservative grassroots organization that's been the major principal group in facilitating the tea party protests this year and, in so doing, has risen to prominence as one of the most influential groups in American politics today.
In it, Armey tells writer Michael Sokolove a lot about his ideas...and those, in turn, tell us something about the movement he's now part of. For one, he says that "The largest empirical problem we have in health care today is too many people are too overinsured."
He also criticizes GOP leaders for pressing a socially conservative
agenda after he retired from the House in 2003. "When Republicans are
fighting against the power of the state, we win. When we are trying to
advance it, we lose," he says. Which is emblematic of why the present
conservative movement is so disconnected from and distrustful of the
Republican Party establishment: the concerns of fiscally conservative
tea partiers have little in common with the socially conservative
campaigns run by President Bush in 2000 and 2004, and the increased
spending under his administration.
He also says he thinks belief in death panels is silly, but that he
doesn't mind it if it helps him. "You know that expression: The enemy
of my enemy is my friend?" he says to Sokolove. "Are their fears
exaggerated? Yeah, probably. But are Obama's promises exaggerated? I
may think it's silly, but if people want to believe that...it's O.K.
with me."
But the coup de grace of Armey's exuberance and folksy charm comes
when, after an earlier discussion that, more or less naturally, led
Armey to refer to himself as a "big shot"...
Later, in North Carolina, we sat down to dinner, and he said: "You ever see that Danny DeVito movie, I think it was Danny DeVito, where he says big shots never order off the menu? They just say what they want." We were at an On the Border, a Tex-Mex restaurant chain and not the type of place I imagine many big shots patronize, but he pushed the menu aside without reading it and told the waiter what he wanted the kitchen to cook up for him.To anyone who's ever been to On the Border, this is patently hilarious. If you haven't, it's pretty good, sort of like Chevy's, or Chili's, or a Tex-Mex TGI Friday's. I've only been once, but I didn't see any big shots in there.
Imagine sitting down at a Chili's and, without a menu, just telling the waiter what you want as he hands you a margarita that's bigger than your head. I think I'm going to try that next time.
i think it's "patently hilarious" that you refer to Freedom works as a "grassroots" organization when its anything but...
"The largest empirical problem we have in health care today is too many people are too overinsured."
Ummm... isn't that exactly what David Goldhill argued in The Atlantic?
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200909/health-care
Does Chris even read his own magazine?
Ummmmm, no. I just reread the David Goldhill article. That wasn't his premise. He said:
"Indeed, I suspect that our collective search for villains—for someone to blame—has distracted us and our political leaders from addressing the fundamental causes of our nation’s health-care crisis. All of the actors in health care—from doctors to insurers to pharmaceutical companies—work in a heavily regulated, massively subsidized industry full of structural distortions. They all want to serve patients well. But they also all behave rationally in response to the economic incentives those distortions create. Accidentally, but relentlessly, America has built a health-care system with incentives that inexorably generate terrible and perverse results. Incentives that emphasize health care over any other aspect of health and well-being. That emphasize treatment over prevention. That disguise true costs. That favor complexity, and discourage transparent competition based on price or quality. That result in a generational pyramid scheme rather than sustainable financing. And that—most important—remove consumers from our irreplaceable role as the ultimate ensurer of value."
Does Conn Carroll even read the articles he/she/it cites?
Dick Armey is folksy and charming?
"Ummmmm, no. I just reread the David Goldhill article. That wasn't his premise."
You may have reread the article, but you misunderstood it. Behind all of the prevaricating and caveats, Goldhill makes an argument very similar to Armey:
"Today, insurance covers almost all health-care expenditures. The few consumers who pay from their pockets are simply an afterthought for most providers."
Wonder what an "empirical problem" is, exactly.
Goldhill's point was not that there was overinsurance, over coverage or even that too many are insured but that the method of reimbursement encouraged the wasting of resources.