single payer plan: not even a meatball’s chance on rush limbaugh’s dinner plate
Thursday, August 20th, 2009
‘We’ll have no one to blame but ourselves if healthcare reform doesn’t include a public option.’ So read the subheading to columnist Robert Reich’s piece ‘The Public Option’s Last Stand,’ featured recently at Salon.com. It appears a Salon editor took some liberty with Reich’s article in response to the real possibility that the Obama administration had winced over the battle to reform healthcare.
Though it might invite the accusation of ‘blaming the victim,’ our culpability strikes me as quite reasonable. So what if there’s been plenty of passionate and urgent venting about healthcare reform; no voter consensus has emerged to force even a committee majority in Congress to thoughtfully consider providing a single payer system like Medicare for U.S. citizens under age 65.
Given the career paths of former staffers for Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) – whose campaign has received insurance and pharma industry millions – a single payer plan never had even a meatball’s chance on Rush Limbaugh’s dinner plate.
Opponents of healthcare reform have stirred up a hornet’s nest of outrage by plying all manner of lies and pathetic exaggerations about the government option offered in a health insurance exchange along with private carriers.
There is a big disconnect in the thinking of the town hall hecklers about what really is at stake for them and the country. They’ve allowed themselves to be seduced by visions of unaccountable government control over healthcare while believing, as coordinated voters, they have no means to check abuses of power. The Right has been able to exploit this assumption, distracting their kool-aide drinking followers from realizing the possibility of governing this nation as ‘we the people’ or ‘by the people’.
Consequently, they express a paralyzing cynicism or jaundiced view of the U.S. government. Such was illustrated in a Facebook dialogue I had recently with members of my extended family. What follows is an excerpt from an opinion piece by the Washington Post (culled by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society) commenting on the Affordable Health Choices Act’s favorable treatment of the pharmaceutical industry:
[T]he bill includes a provision that would create a 12-year market exclusivity period for brand-name biologic drugs. This would drive costs to consumers above even current levels, making the title little more than a mockery.
So one member of the family responded:
Great . . . we knew this bill was crap . . . guess only if you are healthy and NEVER need a doctor and don’t need money either. I am so glad we are used [sic] failed patterns to imitate when creating our system.
And I was not above playing the devil’s advocate: ‘So you’re in favor of the single payer plan?’
She responded: ‘Actually, for massive de-regulation. Gov’t seems to mess up what they touch. The letters IRS come to mind. . . .’
Then her sister chimed in:
It’s never good when the government plays ‘god’ with people’s lives . . . like our good friend and illustrious leader BO. ‘Single Payer’. . . hm-m-m-m-m-m-m. . . catchy. Too bad it can never work.
While neither thankfully invoked any Hitler comparisons to President Obama – like the loon who recently faced off against Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) – I do share the congressman’s befuddlement. I consider it the highest form of irony for one to complain about cost of medicine and then assert the need for its ‘massive de-regulation.’
What’s far more troubling is the unspoken assumption that they bear no responsibility to hold decision makers accountable for government’s lapses in judgement or abuses of power. I would characterize the disconnect as an accountability gap; between government policy and an alert and engaged electorate.
The business of governing this country requires far more inclusive and attentive participation than election day vote casting and the odd phone call or letter to elected representatives; far more involving input than signing petitions and waiving signs at town hall gatherings.
What’s required is each voter’s willingness to compromise somewhat on his or her ideological latitude so that he or she might be a part of the united consensus that will be necessary to take back governing; to really embody the meaning of e pluribus unum.
