Very bad association, Congressman. Watch video
Of all the lamentable remarks from Tom MacArthur lately, the most tone-deaf utterance was his observation that the critics of his health care calamity share the same anxiety as those who dreaded the death panel myth sent down from Planet Palin.
"I think it speaks to the people's fear, but it reminds me a bit, people were saying President Obama wanted to set up death panels, wanted old people to die," the 3rd District congressman said after his five-hour town hall in Willingboro Wednesday. "You look back now and you realize how insane people got with their fear and their anger."
The maestro of the Obamacare repeal now says that he was referring to common "scare-tactics" used to "drum up fear," but nothing is more alarming than miscuing the national reaction to the resurrection of this fetid corpse known as the American Health Care Act.
MacArthur doesn't seem to remember: Sarah Palin and her acolytes used "death panel" to spread a lie - refuted in every advanced culture - that government involvement in health care means rationing and death.
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The fear he witnessed Wednesday night is based on the fact that federal involvement in health care is a necessity, because it ensures that nobody is left out or exploited by a predatory industry - just the opposite of a death panel, you might say.
And that the best way to subvert that is with the infamous MacArthur Amendment, which allows states to seek waivers from the federal requirements, allowing insurers to charge exorbitantly for a pre-existing condition or drown you in a high-risk pool.
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The worst thing you can do is allow states to define essential coverage. What exactly does MacArthur's Party consider not essential? Mammograms? Medication? Maternal care? Mental health?
It's a "caste system of health care," to use a term from Linda Schwimmer, the president and CEO of the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute.
"The healthy, wealthy and male will do OK, but the vast majority of the population suffers under such as system," she said. "Real leaders try to create a system that benefits everyone."
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That obligation eluded MacArthur, and now there is ample reason for his constituents to feel legitimate fear.
His mistake was believing that he would be embraced as a credible policy wonk, rather than what he really is: a dime-store illusionist who wants to make Medicaid money vanish and then reappear in the pockets of millionaires, and if the middle class is collateral damage, they were suckers to think Team Trump cared in the first place.
Rather than being a lawmaker of substance, he is one of dangerous ambition, one who suddenly makes Congress's 20-percent approval rating seem confoundingly high. Death panel? His career may have met one Wednesday night.
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