Listening to Rudy Giuliani’s blatantly dishonest radio ad about his bout with prostate cancer, the audience is led to believe that his access to the U.S. healthcare system saved his life. We don’t need to expand access to more Americans, he argues, because the system is fine the way it is. After all, countries that offer universal care offer worse care. Give the uninsured a few tax credits and hope the free market handles the rest.
But before we just chalk this up to another absurd approach to public policy from a clueless presidential candidate, Sara Mosle reminds us that Giuliani embraced the opposite approach in 2000, after his taxpayer-financed cancer treatment.
At a packed and emotional news conference in May 2000, in which he announced he was dropping out of the race for the U.S. Senate as a result of his illness, Giuliani admitted to suddenly seeing the world very differently. He said his illness had changed him and that he wanted to reach out to minority groups and the poor. Most important, he said, he had newfound respect, understanding, and empathy for the city’s uninsured. It seems Giuliani couldn’t feel people’s pain until he, well — literally — felt people’s pain. But once he had, he stated that extending health insurance coverage to more of the city’s uninsured was his top goal for his remaining 18 months in office….
A couple of weeks later, Giuliani made good on his promise. He reversed his administration’s earlier position, which sought to limit government involvement in addressing the problem of the city’s uninsured — especially children. Giuliani announced he was tripling his administration’s financial support for a program called Health Stat, which would aggressively recruit greater numbers of uninsured children for coverage under two existing government-run programs: Medicaid and Child Health Plus.
Yes, the leading Republican presidential candidate who used to be pro-choice (but isn’t anymore), and used to support gay rights (but now supports an anti-gay constitutional amendment), and used to support gun control (but now sucks up the NRA), and used to open the city’s doors to illegal immigrants (but now supports a crackdown), also used to support government-run health insurance. Indeed, in light of his own brush with morality, Giuliani felt he had a moral obligation to do so.
At the time, Giuliani probably thought his political career was over, and he hoped to do some good for people before his public service came to an end.
When asked what the tripling of Health Stat would cost, Mayor Giuliani replied he didn’t know, but acknowledged it would be “a good deal of money.” (One estimate at the time put the cost to the city over four years at roughly $390 million.) His message was clear: He didn’t care what it cost, because it was the right thing to do, and he hoped New York would become “a model for the rest of the country.”
And Giuliani didn’t stop there. He later backed up the Health Stat campaign with advertising, and met with clergymen and other religious leaders to help promote his initiative, especially in immigrant neighborhoods where potential enrollees often fear any entanglement with the government. As the New York Times described Giuliani’s efforts in November 2000: “The almost military zeal with which the Giuliani administration has undertaken the Health Stat effort has impressed some health care advocates, who were initially skeptical about the extent of the city’s commitment.” In January 2001, Giuliani further extended the Health Stat program to 700,000 adults in New York City who were eligible for low-cost coverage but had failed to enroll in the relevant state program, Family Health Plus. The eligibility limit for subsidized health insurance at the time was $49,875 for a family a five — or what many Republicans have decried as decidedly “middle-class” in discussions of the S-CHIP bill before Congress.
Where’d this guy go? Oh right, he decided to run for the Republican presidential nomination — and run on a platform in opposition to “socialized medicine.”
Also note, Giuliani has executed the hard-to-pull-off flip-flop-flip. He was against expanding access, then he was for it, and now he’s against it.
I’m sure, if asked, Giuliani will explain that his support for government-run health insurance ended because of 9/11. It won’t make any sense, but it’s his answer for everything.