Rep. Shadegg: Turning Dr. Luntz's Memo Into A Blog Post

In his blog post, "Ready for Rationing?," appearing on both the GOP blog and the Net Right Nation, Rep. John Shadegg makes some interesting conclusions.  Interesting in that they are either perfectly in line with the detailed instructions given by Dr. Frank Luntz or they completely ignore the parameters set by Dr. Luntz. 

ON Message: Health Care Rationing Is Bad

Rep. Shadegg: "Are you ready for health care rationing?  Are you ready to be told what treatments, medicines, and procedures you can or cannot have?  Because rationing may be coming soon to your doctor's office or a hospital near you."

Rep. Shadegg comes out of the gate with his assertion that increased government involvement in health care would lead to the rationing of care.  Similarly, Dr. Luntz described the following from Sen. Kyl as "the perfect anti-rationing language": "We should be very skeptical of government control of healthcare.  With government run healthcare, federal bureaucrats make coverage decisions.  They decide what you get for what you're charged.  They also decide when you can't have certain coverage because it's too expensive or because you are disqualified based on criteria like age."

OFF Message: Cheaper Health Care Is Bad 

Rep. Shadegg: "Last week, Obama economic advisor, Larry Summers, expressed Democrats' desire for 'changing the way in which we deliver health care in this country...[W]hether it's tonsillectomies or hysterectomies...by doing the right kind of cost-effectiveness...some experts estimate that we could take as much as $700 billion a year out of our health care system.'"

Reducing national health care costs by $700 billion is a bad thing?  That is evidently the argument laid out by Rep. Shadegg in this paragraph, and in doing so, he strayed from the instructions issued by Dr. Luntz: "They [citizens] don't want to hear that you're opposed to government healthcare because it's too expensive (any help from the government to lower costs will be embraced)..." [parentheses original]

ON Message: Based On AIG, Katrina, And The National Debt, It Is Clear Government Can't Manage Any Large Operation

Rep. Shadegg: "Do you really trust the same government that can't oversee AIG, run a hurricane recovery effort, or balance its budget to decide which drugs, procedures, or operations are cost-effective for the American people?"

Likewise, Dr. Frank Luntz advised Republicans to argue "that the government that can't even run a company should not be running healthcare."

Perhaps it should be mentioned here that the AIG bailout, the failed response to Hurricane Katrina, and an explosion of the national debt occurred during the last administration - not the current one.

OFF Message: Americans Should Have Less Effective, More Expensive Health Care

Rep. Shadegg: "In the stimulus bill, Democrats already passed $1.1 billion in so-called 'comparative effectiveness research.'  While this language sounds innocuous, it is actually quite dangerous. Here's how David Obey, Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, explained it in the committee's own report: 'those items, procedures, and interventions... that are found to be less effective and in some cases, more expensive, will no longer be prescribed' [emphasis added]." [brackets original]

Isn't it a good thing that less effective, more expensive treatments "will no longer be prescribed"?  Here Rep. Shadegg got it wrong as even Dr. Luntz wrote that "affordable, quality healthcare" would be attainable "by eliminating all the unnecessary tests and procedures that are being imposed on patients by doctors practicing defensive medicine rather than preventative medicine."

ON Message: Obama Will Make Your Health Care Choices

Rep. Shadegg: "President Obama even hinted at this ominous future in a recent interview with the New York Times, noting that, 'the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here...there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place.' In other words, he is saying you and your doctor will no longer make the call, government will."

Rep. Shadegg took Dr. Luntz's advice and used this line of reasoning: "Government should not stand between the patient and the physician.  The government should not be able to tell you how much care you can get.  Nobody in the government should tell you that you can't get a medication that's going to help prolong your life or a treatment that's going to make it easier for you..."

ON Message: Cancer Survival Rate Is Higher In The U.S.

Rep. Shadegg: "This is already happening in the United Kingdom, where the national health care board recently confirmed a ban on three of four life-prolonging drugs for its kidney cancer patients. Now, roughly half of those diagnosed with this cancer will not be eligible for the medical care they need. Is it any wonder that Americans are 14% more likely to survive breast cancer, 35% more likely to survive colon cancer, and almost twice as likely to survive prostate cancer than their British counterparts?"

Taken directly from the talking points, Rep. Shadegg used the Dr. Luntz-approved argument of Sen. Tom Coburn: "Why is it that we have a 50% higher cure rate in cancers that [sic] anybody else in the world?  And why is it if you get breast cancer in America, you are into your treatment within three weeks and in the rest of the world it's four months or six months or nine months?"

ON Message: Federal Boards Are Bad

Rep. Shadegg: "If Washington follows Tom Daschle's suggestion to create a federal health care planning board that 'exert[s] tremendous influence on every . . . provider and payer,' we could face the same denial of treatment-and it will be us and our loved ones who will lose our health care freedom."

Rep. Shadegg eloquently paraphrased Dr. Luntz's memo when Luntz quoted Senator Kyl using the following argument: "So one size definitely does not fit all, and we should never allow a federal panel of bureaucrats to erase these great gains in personalized care." [page 12]  Dr. Luntz also wrote that Republicans should argue: "No Washington bureaucrat or healthcare lobbyist should stand between your family and your doctor."

In Between Message: "Government Health Care"

Rep. Shadegg: "Are you ready for government health care? Are you ready for rationing?"

In conclusion, Rep. Shadegg refers to the phantom "government health care" by avoiding the specific language choices set forth by Dr. Luntz: "You'll notice we recommend the phrase "government takeover" rather than "government run" or "government controlled." [emphasis original]

Note - Missing From Dr. Luntz's Memo: "An Argument Without Supporting Facts Will Fail"

Rep. Shadegg's blog post was clearly written after a somewhat thorough reading of Dr. Luntz's detailed messaging memo on the language of fighting health care reform.  His argument against reform simply rewords (and often misinterprets) the memo's instructions.  If they are to truly succeed, the GOP needs to pair Dr. Luntz's skillful way with words with some actual information.  Perhaps Rep. Shadegg left the information out because the facts are clearly on President Obama's side.