Timidity Passing For Wisdom: Health Care Reform At Low Tide
I tend to tune out most of the "end of America" doomsaying. Rumors of our impending demise generally seem to be exaggerated. We've been around for a long time and we've survived many trials. Because nothing lasts forever, I'm sure someday the entity once known as "The United States of America" will cease to exist as a recognizable descendent of the original plan. In the meantime, we'll ebb and flow, but somehow endure.
Still.....it really sucks to be in the ebb-tide.
That really hit me watching President Obama's speech last night. What a strange tableau it was. It's his make-or-break, I'm-going-to-bring-the-goods-and-you'd-all-better-step-up-or-step-off speech...to a body of people that 62% of Americans wouldn't trust to balance their checkbooks, much less meaningfully reorganize a sixth of whatever's left of the economy.
There are many good and honorable men and women serving in the United States Congress. But as body, they are simply incapable of legislating in a rational and reasoned manner. They're beholden to too many special interests, and those special interests have too many contradictory goals.
While everyday Americans are calling and writing and protesting and screaming and shouting and biting off each other's pinky fingers, the various groups that make up the health care lobby have been spending an estimated $1.5 million a DAY to bring Congress around to their way of thinking. Since 2007, the industry has donated $170 million to the campaign funds and PACs of members on both sides of the aisle..
People who understand the complexities of the legislative process far better than I all seem to be saying that despite the Sturm und Drang in the House, it's really the Senate reform bills that matter. And the Senate bills are going to be stage-managed and brought for a vote by the "Group of Six," a committee of three Democrats and three Republicans chaired by conservative Democrat Max Baucus of Montana.
Want to know how much they've collectively gotten in donations from the health care industry over the years? Just over $9 million.
Baucus leads the pack with roughly $2.9 million, followed by Kent Conrad (D-North Dakota) at $2.1 million, Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) at $2 million, Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) with $756,000, Jeff Bingaman (D-New Mexico) at $642,952 and Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming) at $627,000.
But hey -- I'm sure they'll act in the best interests of all those constituents who've sent them $50 or $100 over the years.
And then there's the speech itself. Look, President Obama is a great speaker. While I didn't care for this week's Ode to Schoolchildren, he and his speechwriters usually manage to come up with some of the best rhetorical flourishes of the post-JFK era. "But that's not what the moment calls for. That's not what we came here to do. We did not come to fear the future. We came here to shape it. I still believe we can act even when it's hard. I still believe we can replace acrimony with civility, and gridlock with progress. I still believe we can do great things, and that here and now we will meet history's test."
These are beautiful lines. And they paper over the internal contradictions of the other 95% of the speech.
This is an emergency, this is a crisis, the whole system is corrupt and people are DYING -- but "since health care represents one-sixth of our economy, I believe it makes more sense to build on what works and fix what doesn't, rather than try to build an entirely new system from scratch."
The only way to make this new system work is if everyone participates. People and businesses can't just stand on the sideline and let other people and businesses pick up the tab. Such "irresponsible behavior" costs us money -- but "there will be a hardship waiver for those individuals who still cannot afford coverage, and 95% of all small businesses, because of their size and narrow profit margin, would be exempt from these requirements."
We are not going to get between you and your doctor. Whatever medical treatment you need, you can get, without question -- but "under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place."
There were probably a half-dozen items in the speech last night that either contradicted each other OR were completely implausible ...especially the budget-neutrality issue.
So here we are, all 300 million of us. More than 30 million of us out of work. More than 40 million of us without health insurance. Over 35 million of us on food stamps. One in every 357 of us facing foreclosure. Credit-card defaults at a 20-year high. Untold millions facing their elder years with depleted retirement savings and a social-security net currently being plundered to service the enormous debts accrued by other parts of the government.
Last night made one thing clear: this will continue to be an era when, to paraphrase the President, timidity passes for wisdom. Over the coming weeks and months, we're going to be presented with a moldy crumb scraped off the butt end of a dried-out loaf of bread, and we're going to be told it's a delicious piece of chocolate cake.
It will not be chocolate cake. It will be a moldy crumb riddled with loopholes that either keep the status quo firmly in place, or give the insurance industry ample opportunity to exploit new revenue streams, all while adding billions to the national tab.
I wish there was some solution to this. Some way to make our elected officials to work in our best interests, to not be so fearful of ripping any failing system apart and trying to build a shining, equitable new model in it's place. I don't know if that solution exists. Maybe we just have to sit back and wait for the tide to turn.
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Max Rivlin-Nadler
Janis Jaquith
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Comments
I just don't think it should be legal for special interest groups to bribe and pay our elected representatives to vote for them and their interests. It amazes me how much money is spend on lobbying, especially from healthcare insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies. These companies are evil because they put making huge amounts of money above the healthcare of the people they're supposed to be helping.
Getting the red and blue states in a snarling, scratching fight over something we actually have a shared interest in is the very best way to ensure the corporations continue to rule.
Well written, well-reasoned and, well, utterly hopeless.
1) I don't trust those criminals in Washington to organize 1/6 of the U.S. Economy. None of them ever HAVE balanced their own checkbooks.
2) Everything the President said could easily be dismissed with: Really? And you can prove that how?
It was an opinion speech of how he'd LIKE things to happen but has no way of proving it will actually happen that way.
I don't want Pelosi and Barney Frank playing with healthcare. They've proven they can't be trusted to do the most basic things and certainly do not represent their constituents. Rated.
More important, it’s what we can do at it does not signal the end of the fight.
This post was not helpful in the fight for meaningful reform.
We can debate what constitutes real & meaningful reform, and think most of us would come up with a lot of different metrics. But the fact is, health care reform is so hard and so politically hazardous, once whatever Frankensteinian bill Congress eventually generates is voted and signed, that's it. There's going to be no wind in the sails to push forward. This is what we're going to get, and it's going to be far from universal and reasonably priced.
It's called the vote.
Unfortunately less than half actually vote. The other half spends it time watching Entertainment Tonight, American Idol and Jon Stewart.
The dumb masses rule.
Nice analysis of the interior conflicts in the speech. Particularly liked this:
Over the coming weeks and months, we're going to be presented with a moldy crumb scraped off the butt end of a dried-out loaf of bread, and we're going to be told it's a delicious piece of chocolate cake.
It will not be chocolate cake. It will be a moldy crumb riddled with loopholes that either keep the status quo firmly in place, or give the insurance industry ample opportunity to exploit new revenue streams, all while adding billions to the national tab.
That's as good a summation of what's going on as I've read.
Sucks, doesn't it? In this case, it means defining "fixed" down. There'll be some changes, maybe even for the better. But it won't be true reform, because true reform -- the creation of a universal and equitable system that puts us on par with most of the industrialized world -- can't happen under the current model.
There is absolutely no evidence that this would occur. The Congress has the lowest approval rating ever in history, nobody trusts them and a huge amount of them are involved in scandals. Really? These Einsteins will suddenly do the right thing? No. All evidence shows they will bungle it, they will lie, they will tax us to death and we'll be left holding the bag, like we were with the bailouts, etc.
We all want the same thing. We just want different ways to get there.
I continue to believe that the President is getting some very dangerous advice. It seems as if his handlers are calling the plays from the “Wizard of Oz” playbook. As in Texas Hold’em, they continue to put the President All-In even when his cards are marginal, ie 52% disapproval rating… RATED
you don't have access to the management of the nation, through citizen initiative, you are told this is a good thing, you come to believe it.
you have described the result very well here, how do you like it?
Quite the opposite. I've voted in every single election since I turned 18. I've worked for the Democratic Party. I've worked on campaigns. I have a BA in U.S. History with a minor in comparative politics. I keep myself informed on the issues from a variety of sources and a variety of ideological viewpoints, and though my writings, try to inform others as well. As I see it, that make's me Citizen of the Year.
That and $5 will get me a latte at Starbucks.
We fool ourselves if we think there was ever a Golden Age of American Democracy. The majority of voting-age adults in this country (all women and most African-Americans males) were disenfranchised until well into the 20th Century. The Money Politics of today were the Machine Politics of yesteryear. To some degree, the fix has always been in.
This really didn't matter as much until the Federal Government began expanding it's reach into the daily lives of citizens.
Until the Civil War, the Post Office was really the only intersection of Washington and the common man. But with the establishment of the income tax and the centralization of currency, that began to change. And it completely busted loose with the New Deal.
I'm not saying any of these things are bad -- well, except for the income tax thingy -- but this idea that we somehow know how to put citizens in control of those sworn to represent them is just not accurate.
How do you "fix" something that never really worked the way it was designed to without throwing it out? I'm not a Revolutionary. I love my country. Thus my conundrum....because my country is not doing right by my countrymen and countrywomen, and I don't see a way to alter that.