WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!:

Weapon in Health Wars: Frist's Role as a Doctor (Robin Toner, 1/11/03, NY Times)

Critics of the Republican health care agenda say they are getting a little tired of hearing about the heroic-healer image of the new Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, a former transplant surgeon. They say that he may be a wonderful heart surgeon but that he is peddling the same old Republican free-market ideology on Medicare.

Seven years ago the leading defender of Republican proposals to overhaul Medicare, the vast government health insurance program for the elderly, was the speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, who was not known for his bedside manner. This year the Bush administration and the Republican Party have a smooth, empathetic, Harvard-trained physician to make the case.

Critics fear that Dr. Frist, as he has asked to be called, will be able to use his trustworthy doctor's persona to sell a far-reaching and contentious proposal to open up Medicare to more private health plans. With Dr. Frist supporting it, "how could it be wrong?" Representative Jim McDermott, a liberal Seattle Democrat, said with more than a little sarcasm. The majority leader's M.D. is the Bush administration's "finesse card on health care," said Mr. McDermott, himself a psychiatrist.

It may, in fact, be the Republicans' not-so-secret weapon on an issue that has bedeviled them in the past, when they were often accused of simply trying to save money rather than "reform" a popular program.

When did the Democrats become so whiny? First Tom Daschle's upset that the war is a political issue; then they're upset that conservatives have established a beachead in the media, then it's the President getting to appoint judges... Don't they find politics fun anymore? I'm starting to miss Tip O'Neill. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 11, 2003 8:10 AM