To be a bit more substantive on the transparently cynical attempts to paint universal health care as an access point for terrorists, it's worth noting how quickly Neil Cavuto and his guest fall back on platitudes about the dangers of "bureaucracy."
Guest: You also have a situation in which a state-run health care enterprise is bureaucratic, and I think the terrorists have shown over and over again, whether it's dealing with INS or dealing with airport security, that they're very good at gaming the system within bureaucracies, they're very good at figuring out how to get around bureaucracies.
Cavuto: You also have the advantage in a bureaucracy, as I think you pointed out, in becoming invisible. If you were to join a us medical practice, or just an operation in Missouri or Kansas, you would stand out for your religious views, or being an oddity period. So that's what is distinctive about a national system, it's more diluted.
Points if anyone can parse that exchange into something sensical. The first, and most striking, hole in their argument is that it's simply factually untrue. Before 9/11, airport security wasn't part of a federal bureaucracy. It was run by private contractors. After the attacks, it was largely federalized in the Department of Homeland Security bill.
Additionally, the INS wasn't particularly gamed. The terrorists were here legally, though some had overstayed their visas. That's not some clever bureaucratic evasion, or an abuse that private companies would prove capable of quashing. And they took private flight lessons, and rented real estate from private owners, and bought groceries from private enterprises, and picked up box cutters from private suppliers, and generally proved just as adept at navigating the private sector as the public -- something Cavuto doesn't mention.
Indeed, nothing about this discourse on bureaucracies makes sense. "You become invisible." Really? To whom? More invisible than you are working at Dell, or GM? If so, why? And given that the process by which oddities stand out in the workplace is that their immediate peers notice, how would this change in a federal system? Because it's "diluted," I guess. Might as well say it's "mustard." This is just blather, words untethered from their meanings, arguments that long ago gave up on logic.
If you don't listen too closely, though, it's sort of scary. Which is the point.
Related: Megan examines the evil lurking within bureaucracies (link fixed).
