The shallowness of John Linder

It must be nice to be an elected Republican official, particularly one in Georgia. Because, by being one, you're afforded the right to literally say the craziest things in the world and have them be accepted as fact.

I can't even begin to express the frustration, disappointment and outright concern I have for the future of civilized and rational dialogue in this nation if shoddy journalism like this continues to go on unabated, and we keep electing politicians like Rep. John Linder who is more interested in absolutely and unequivocally making stuff up rather than debating the issue at hand ...

A final consideration, Linder said, is the cost of administering a health care program. He said liberals argue that the government could provide health insurance much more cheaply than those “rich, greedy, rip-off insurance companies.”

“If you add the fraud from Medicare and Medicaid to the cost of administering it, they’re about 12 percent higher than those rich, greedy rip-off insurance companies,” he said “because they’re incompetent at detecting fraud.”

Let's leave aside the fact that his own prescriptions for addressing this issue are either tantamount to being band-aids on the problem or outright mischaracterizations of a much more complicated, intertwined debate (thinking that tort reform is the magical answer to all our woes is just flat-out wrong and suggests a intellectual shallowness that staggers me).

Linder here suggests there is ample fraud existing in Medicare and Medicaid, and that by attacking this fraud we can bring down health care costs dramatically. Of course, he offers no evidence for this and reports indicate that this 'fraud' actually pales in comparison to the projected costs of both reform and non-reform scenarios. But, assuming Linder's non-sourced accusation is accurate, it's important to remember this ... eliminating fraud and waste in Medicare and Medicaid is currently included in all five versions of the reform bills.

This is the opposition to health care. It's void of new ideas and, to compensate, it relies on flat-out falsehoods that, if said with some measure of authority, are pathetically accepted as truths.