Why We Are Not Getting Real Health Reform: Financial and Political Capital

It’s rather fitting that I am writing a piece about health care while I am fighting a cold and unable to sleep at 2 in the morning. So, I apologize in advance if any of this is incoherent. The following is a product of my inability to sleep as well as the failure to breathe out of my nose. Fortunately for me, I am in the middle class and can afford to go to a public college that gives me decent health insurance for very limited costs. Regrettably, most of the country is not this well off.

According to a recent study Harvard University linked 45,000 deaths in the United States to inadequate health insurance (http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/harvard-medical-study-links-lack-of-insurance-to-45000-us-deaths-a-year/?scp=2&sq=harvard&st=cse). That’s roughly three September 11ths a year. I’m not too sure how anyone can read this study and not be outraged. It is an apparent indication that we need serious and pragmatic health care reform in this country, and very quickly. Instead of honest debate and legislation we have gotten the same political jabbering and lobbying that is at the core of all of our Country’s problems.

Now, what makes this debate even more frustrating is the combination of public and media controversy. We have seen people on the right going to town hall meetings, marching in D.C., opposed to any reforms put out by the Democratic Party. At the heart of all of this I do not see angry American’s fearful about “socialism,” rather, I see a bitter Republican Party, and Conservative movement trying very hard to get political vengeance. Let’s think back to the eight years prior to Barack Obama’s presidency. In the white house was George W. Bush, who was perhaps one of the most controversial and impugned presidents in United States history. He was slammed by the left at every opportunity, conceivably, most of all regarding the war in Iraq. From the start of that war, the left had used similar tactics that the right is currently using against the Democrats about health care (with smaller numbers indeed, but with the same, if not more media attention). In my opinion, Afghanistan is not “Obama’s war” right now. Although later Afghanistan might be his defining foreign affairs moment, it is health care that has taken national stage and will define the beginning of Obama’s presidency.

With that in mind, look at what the right is doing. Some on the far right have berated the President as a Nazi. Joe Wilson, a member of congress, has interrupted a major political speech on reform. Last but not least, right-wing media personalities such as Glenn Beck have gone as far to call Obama a racist. All of this leaves me rather skeptical when I see genuine conservatives out on the streets, many of which are clearly uneducated about politics, and history. For instance take a look at this YouTube video documenting the 9/12 rally in Washington:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUPMjC9mq5Y&feature=topvideos

People referring to the president as “socialist,” “communist and “fascist” interchangeably reveals my concern. Even in the 1960s Obama’s proposed reforms would not have been chastised by the right with such false proclamations such as “socialist.” What these protests led me to think was how closely they resemble some of the protesting against Bush regarding Iraq. I was certainly part of those protests, and truly believe in such a right, but I find the root of the current protests to be very disingenuous.

I believe that those who lead the right are bitter about the Bush years. Bush was so widely scrutinized that it truly hurt the Republican Party. This is what I mean by political capital. Therefore, in an attempt to counter attack, the right has chosen to do the same that the left did to Bush, this time it’s about health care reform. The problem here is that Bush’s invasion of Iraq was based on clear lies, sent American troops into harm’s way, and killed countless innocent civilians. Obama’s health care reform, although far from perfect, is an attempt to save lives.

The Republican politicians, and leaders (not necessarily the people doing the marching, I don’t want to completely chastise them), are bitter about losing the election and about the left tearing apart its previous leader. In the case, the media has taken on a huge role in this. Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’reilly, our good buddies, have thrown out disastrous lies about health reform. These include claims of death panels, socialism, destruction of Medicare, ect. In essence they have built a right wing army that hold up posters of Obama as Hitler, and call Obama a racist. This leaves the legitimate educated right who have real helpful concerns in the dust.

So why is this happening? Well, like I said before the right is bitter, but they also need to gain political capital. Unfortunately, the leaders of the right are TV and radio pundits looking for ratings, and people like Joe Wilson trying to get reelected. The right needs to be legitimate again, and this is how they are doing it: through hysteria, lies, and anti-intellectualism.

I do not believe that those on the ground actually protesting Obama are disingenuous. I believe they are misled patriots. They are misled by people seeking political capital in order to get reelected at a time when conservative ideology is not very popular in the United States. The Democrats are far from innocent in this debate. They had an opportunity to give us real reform proposals, but due to their own concern for political capital, and insurance lobbyists that fund campaigns they gave us limited reform proposals. I guess they did not count on the right garnering so much momentum, because now it seems like we are getting practically no reform. Personally, I wish to see a single-payer system, but the Democrats blew that one, so my hopes were for some step toward caring for every single American.

What breaks my heart about all of this is that intrinsically, health care should be about helping people. Instead, the debate has been run by corporate lobbyists, conservative celebrities seeking ratings, political capital, and left wing ineptitude. We are supposed to be the freest, most democratic, and wealthiest nation on earth, yet we allow nearly 45,000 to die each year because our politicians and corporatocracy have too much financial and political investment in our current system. Yet, there is hope. The left can fight back. The true left. Those who were always skeptical about Obama, those who pay attention, and those who desperately want real health care in this country must fight back

Arlen Spector and the Two-Party System

The big political news of the last few days is the switch of Senator Arlen Spector from a Republican to a Democrat. The reason why this is so important is that it gives the democrats 60 votes in the Senate (baring the ongoing recount in the Minnesota senate race). This of course gives the Democrats the power to break a filibuster, and more easily get their legislation passed.

Indeed, this continues to signify the shift in American politics and perhaps the public to the left. However, our country has created such a dichotomy of Democrat and Republican or Liberal and Conservative that the shift just goes back and forth. After 8 years of clear policy failures we are seeing the cycle shift back to the left. This cycle seems to me to be a function of an educated majority. Let's face it, we don't really have the best education system in the world. In fact, it's quite inefficient. While our children are not being effectively taught math or science, we have also neglected to provide them with a real and honest education in history, civics, and economics.

Our lack of history allows for the public to easily get swept up with war rhetoric, our lack of economic education allows for an uneducated mass of people scratching their heads at a very complex but important economic crisis. Finally, the lack of civics has allowed us to continue to elect incompetent and corrupted leaders from the same two ruling parties.

Now this may be a generalization, but there is something fundamentally wrong with a two party system, especially when the public is so uneducated and apathetic toward the process. One of the biggest issues is local and congressional elections. In 2006 80,975,537 people cast their votes for the mid-term elections. The number of people eligible to vote was nearly 220,000,000 people (and the voter turnout that year was good relative to recent congressional elections before it). This means that well over half of the eligible population does not vote for our lawmakers, and an even smaller amount actually voted for the person who is suppose to represent a large portion of the public.

So here we are with a Republican switching to become a Democrat and most of the country doesn’t care. Why? Is it because they are lazy and apathetic? Many certainly are, but the majority of the people are just not educated very well. Many see two parties that do not realistically relate to most working class people. Democrats and Republicans are fundamentally the same, with small deviations on certain issues. Neither party represents or even tries to carry out the will of the people. Yet, these people remain in our government mostly through an ever-exhausting tradition.

The election of Obama put a lot of faith in the Democratic Party. In the end, as we are already seeing, the message of hope and change was a fabulous marketing strategy by the Democratics. To give credit to Obama, he has not deviated from his campaign. The issues that were discussed (although very rarely during the campaign), have been addressed consistently. The problem here is that elections are never about the issues because both candidates seldom have the same ideas as the majority of the public. The problem is that the majority of Americans want to fully leave Iraq (as oppose to keeping “non-combat” troops), they want the government to look into a single-payer health care system, most want the Bush administration to be brought to justice for torture. They want better education, more regulation and to address climate change. And the list goes on. The problem here is that many think that the president is the one to look to in order to carry out these initiatives. People need to have a better understanding of the democratic-republican process, and to make informative votes for congress. I don’t mean to suggest that voting is the main answer, in fact I think voting is somewhat useless in a two party system, but the two party system is not permanently embedded into the legal structure of the country. We do have the ability to create more parties; it will just take a deeper grassroots effort. We saw a huge grassroots effort with Obama, but once most of those people realize how Democrats and Republicans are all part of a very similar agenda, they will hopefully put their efforts towards real change in American politics.