Healthcare We Can Believe In: Subject to Debate

Healthcare We Can Believe In
Subject to Debate
By Katha Pollitt
The Nation
August 12, 2009

I am not a wonk. Usually this is not a problem. But when it comes to healthcare reform, it matters. You see, I long to dash forward, flaming sword in hand, to champion President Obama's healthcare plan. Every day I get e-mails from Health Care for America Now, Organizing for America, MoveOn.org and similar groups urging me to write my Congressman, attend a town-hall meeting, host a gathering. But how can I speak knowledgeably about a plan that does not yet exist and in which the parameters keep shifting?

I'd like to tell people, Obama's plan is great--for example, it has a public option that will insure those who can't afford private coverage, help rein in the insurance companies by competing with them for members and drive down drug prices through forceful negotiation. But maybe the final bill won't allow the government to negotiate drug prices, because that's the price of Big Pharma's support, which apparently the Obama administration negotiated for in secrecy. Maybe it won't even have a public plan; it will have insurance co-ops instead. And then, maybe, I should say those will be just as good, as Rahm Emanuel's brother, Ezekiel Emanuel, the MD/PhD bioethicist, says.

OK, but what are insurance co-ops? I poked around online for fifteen minutes and discovered that they're untested, small, unregulated, that they exist in twenty states and that Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota really likes them--but I didn't discover what they actually are. I understand "public option," and "public" has a good, strong ring to it--it says, Healthcare is a right, part of the common good, something everyone should have, and if you can't afford it in the marketplace, the government will provide it. "Insurance co-op" speaks a whole other language, of commerce and complexity and exclusivity.

As of this writing, it is far from clear how much of the vocal opposition to reform represents wider popular feeling and how much is a mobile mob of gun nuts, birthers and teabaggers paid for and organized by lobbyists and Republican outfits like Americans for Prosperity, Conservatives for Patients' Rights and FreedomWorks. Several polls show a majority of Americans still want reform. But polls don't mean much politically if everyone stays quiet. Where's the superb organizing the Obama campaign was famous for? Where's the pushback from the left--for the public plan, or even for single-payer? It may be a non-starter in Congress, despite the upcoming vote on Representative John Conyers's HR 676, but one thing you can say for single-payer--it's easy to explain and to understand.

Oh army of Obama supporters who swarmed the country less than one year ago, we need you back knocking on our doors and sleeping on our sofas. We need you to stand on street corners handing out fliers that explain what healthcare reform is really all about and how people can make sure it doesn't get swallowed whole by the drug and insurance companies. Surely you're not too young and strong and healthy and vegan to care about boring parent stuff like health insurance? The diss on you was always that you were infatuated with Obama's charisma and with vague notions of "change"--not with the long slog of political engagement. That isn't true, though, is it?

Please read the complete article at:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090831/pollitt

... and submit it to Congress was a HUGE tactical error, IMO. :(

Powerful advocacy for health care reform is terribly hampered by the fact that there is no solid, progressive reference point -- in the form of a bill we could print out, quote from, e-mail around, etc.

Why Pres. Obama opted not to define the terms of the discussion FROM THE OUTSET by writing his own bill... I can't figure it out.

This issue needed concrete direction and leadership from the president elected with a mandate for Change.

Ludicrous.

Thanks for trying, though. :eyes:

Deal with reality.

Got it.

I see the brilliance of your reasoning now.

for reform.

made quite the showing the other side has, but you know, I think this is why: we don't know exactly what we're trying to get, except in the broadest terms, while they know what they don't want (anything that might help their fellow Americans, because some of them might be brown, IMHO). I think if we had the details, even if they aren't exactly as we'd like them to be, we would be more passionate. I think it's coming, though, because we are seeing that the other side might well stop this thing from happening at all with their crap.