Health Care Reform: America’s Scarlet Pimpernel

Has Barack Obama’s insistence that health care reform be passed in a bi-partisan fashion been unrealistic?  No one can argue that a bi-partisan measure that serves all of the people equally well would be desirable but in a political climate where one party has engaged in a radical campaign to discredit the very idea that the American health care system CAN BE reformed, achieving the goal of bi-partisan legislation was destined to be as elusive as the Scarlet Pimpernel himself.  Democrats have tried to fix the problems with health care for over 4 decades.  Meanwhile the health care system has grown from a minuscule portion of the U.S. GDP to double digits. How could this happen?

Imagine a that fireman, who has friends in the construction business, is walking through an office building. A small paper fire breaks out in a small trash can in a closet and he is the first to see it.  The fireman closes the closet and barricades the door because he doesn’t want anyone to interfere. If anyone tries to put the fire out at this point, it will be relatively simple.  His friends on the other hand, will make a lot of  money reconstructing the building if it burns down and he will get lots of kickbacks, so he decides to stall for as long as possible.  A short while later, he returns with other firemen who now see an office building engulfed in flames. They say, “We need to run inside and save anyone trapped in there, then we need to put out the fire.”  The first fireman says, “No!  We can’t put this fire out.  It’s too big.  Just let it burn itself out.”  People new to the scene don’t know that the guy has been stalling since the fire broke out.  He has failed in his duty to protect and to serve solely to protect the interests of people who make money off of the pain and suffering caused when fires burn out of control.  He doesn’t care about the pain and suffering, his only concern is protecting the business interests of his friends and the money he will get as a result. Sound familiar?

That scenario exactly parallels the U.S. health care problem.

The crooked firemen in this example are Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, and all of the other Republicans who have fought tooth and nail for 50 years against fixing the nightmarish health insurance problem on behalf of the people they are supposed to represent.  Republicans successfully fought against overhauling the health care system throughout the latter half of the 20th century while insurance companies have grown disproportionately, along with their campaign contributions to certain members of Congress.  Now they use the excuse that the system is too big and complex to be fixed by a major overhaul.  A very convenient argument considering that they are the ones responsible for making it that way.  The Republican rank and file simply trust whatever their leaders are saying and regurgitate whatever they hear verbatim. This makes them partners in the business of death.

Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader and Tortoise in Chief

I recently engaged in a futile discussion on a conservative website where I heard the same nonsense about starting over and their constitutional misinterpretations.  The people there are so brainwashed they don’t even know they are simply repeating like a parrot, whatever they have heard. When I told them that they were using talking points they denied it and accused me of using “Obama talking points,” though they could not give an example of where I had done that (they never can).  If the health care summit was not enough to demonstrate that such people cannot be reasoned with, any forum where conservatives voice their [given] opinions will demonstrate the following:  You cannot have a productive dialog with people who believe they ALWAYS have the moral high ground either because they are religious, they claim to be better patriots, or the leaders they respect have given them the party line, which must necessarily be infallible no matter what. That is not the sad part  however.

The sad part is, every progressive person in the country already knew that by last August when angry mobs of zealots and thugs raided town halls across America.  The only person in denial about the absolute intransigence of conservatives on this issue has been Barack Obama.  Sadly, he has wasted an entire year on the delusion that a bi-partisan plan could be reached when there was clearly never any chance of this.  If the Democrats resolve it using reconciliation as I hope they will, he will have used so much political capital to get it done that he may not have enough steam left-over to do anything else.  As it stands, Democrats have to calculate what will be more costly come November; failing to pass health care reform or “ramrodding it” through Congress over the objections of fighting-mad Republicans who have scared half the country with their alarmist rhetoric and misinformation over the past year.  The answer to this question will tell us how much strategic damage was done by the President’s relative silence and allowing the Republicans carte blanche to set the overall narrative for nearly 12 months.

The coming week should provide some illumination on the subject.  Nancy Pelosi has expressed a strong desire to see Senate Democrats proceed using reconciliation procedures and President Obama has pledged to state how he plans to proceed.  What do you think? Should he fish or cut bait?

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