Life and freedom are moral issues.
It is time for Democrats to talk about health in those terms, beyond just policy terms like health insurance reform, bending the cost curve, types of exchanges, etc.
Health means life. If you get a major illness or injury and cannot get it treated adequately, you could die. And tens of thousands do.
Health means freedom. If you have a serious illness or injury and cannot get it treated, your freedom will be limited in many ways. Your physical freedom: you may no longer have the freedom to move around. Your economic freedom: you may not be able to work or your medical bills may impoverish you. Your emotional freedom: you will not be free to live a happy life.
Health is therefore a moral issue of the highest order. And it is a patriotic issue. Health security is a problem for far more Americans than military security. Your security is far more likely to be threatened by the lack of treatment for illness and injury than by any likely terrorist attack.
Real terror is seen in the thousands of letters sent to the White House and Congress by people whose lives have been shattered or threatened by the behavior of the health insurance corporations. Wellpoint, which made $2.7 billion in fourth quarter profits in 2009, tried to raise its Anthem/Blue Cross premiums 39% in California. Wellpoint made its profits by NOT giving health care. It treated 2.2million fewer people. It found a way NOT to treat people who needed treatment, either by refusing to insure them, or dropping them as clients, or denying authorizations. If you are sick or injured and that happens to you, you face terror -- very real terror.
That's when "health maintenance organizations" (HMOs) become health terror organizations.
The Obama administration has been missing the moral arguments in the health care debate, while conservatives always hit their moral targets. Where the conservatives argue loss of freedom ("government takeover") and life ("death panels" and abortion), the administration has been giving policy wonk arguments about economic and pragmatic policy details that the public cannot understand: health exchanges, percentages of the poverty line (133% vs. 150%), and so on. They are real enough. But they do not communicate the moral issues.
Morality and Policy
Why should Congress move to reconciliation? Because it is moral. It is the right thing to do, because it will enhance life and freedom.
Why should the public option be in the reconciliation bill? Because it is right and practical: it allows the market to police the insurance companies -- to keep their greed from overwhelming the life and freedom of tens of millions of Americans. And a public plan-- an American Plan!-- gives you an your doctor much more freedom to determine your treatment, with no profit incentives for insurance companies to deny you care.
Why should national exchanges, not state exchanges, be in the reconciliation bill? Because they provides greater economic freedom -- through bigger pools, which means much more affordable insurance for all. Affordability means economic freedom!
Why cover folks up to 150%, not just 133%, of the poverty line. To offer life and freedom to many more of our fellow Americans.
Why should anti-trust exemptions be ended for health insurance companies? Economic freedom! Anti-trust exemptions function like corporate bailouts. They transfer the money from ordinary people into corporate coffers. By reducing or eliminating competition, corporations can charge more for less treatment to fewer people. Those extra charges, plus out of pocket costs when we are denied care under the plans, come out of our pockets. Anti-trust exemptions take money out our pockets and put it into corporate profits. They threaten our economic freedom.
And how should we be thinking about the passage of a health plan that makes progress but falls short of what is needed? We should be taking it as a national commitment -- a moral commitment -- to health for Americans. It is a commitment to doing what is right, to life, freedom, and health security, a first step of many steps to come.
It is time to return to the moral fundamentals. Health security is deeply patriotic -- perhaps our most important form of security. Health means life. Health means freedom. Everyone can understand that.
George Lakoff is Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. His latest book is The Political Mind: A Cognitive Scientist's Guide to Your Brain and Its Politics
Frankly, I'm fed up with Progressive leadership. I volunteered for the Obama campaign and earlier on, Obama was full of passion and values. What happened to investing in main street instead of Wall Street? What happened to "yes we can"? Now, it's clarify the "facts" about health care policy and roll over when the Conservatives push.
I'm a passionate, rank-and-file implementer. I donate, I sign the petitions and I volunteer. I put out a ton of energy and money to help Obama and other progressives take Washington away from Neo Cons like Bush and now I feel like even though we have the White House and we have Congress, Progressive leaders are rolling over and taking it instead of expressing the Progressive values that are so dear to me -- the values I'm fighting for.
What good is it to donate, volunteer and sign the petitions, etc., if our Progressive leaders will just roll over instead of having our backs?
This is a life and death emotional issue and not a cold and calculated cost/benefits analysis issue.
"Republicans also have their own policies of big spending to blame. Tax cutting has been made more difficult because Bush has been the most profligate president in decades. In his first five years, 2001 to 2006, federal spending increased 45 percent and deficits have soared. It’s tougher to convince the few centrist Democrats in the Senate to go along with making tax cuts permanent when federal red ink is gushing non-stop.
The big spending policies of the Bush administration have been remarkably short-sighted economically and politically, as they have threatened Bush’s primary domestic policy success of pro-growth tax cuts. For its part, the Republican leadership in Congress has gone along with, and often encouraged, the spending feast of recent years. There are only about 50 serious budget reformers in the 435-member House. For the rest, it’s been a pork-barrel pigout in recent years."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6621
Straight from theie own horse's mouth...
Please circulate the Cato Institute report so that our Congressional leaders can arm themselves.
I am reminded of nothing so much as my children, who are genetically programmed to cry "he hit me first" or "she started it", and if all else fails, "that's not fair".
Since the mid-80's, our government has been consistently irresponsible with our money. They have caved to voters and special interests and said "yes" too often, without paying the bill. Much of our population has lived the same way. Let's all start to think like grown-ups and start saying "no", especially to pointless partisan games.
DNR the "public option"
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/23-4
A public option, single payer system for health care coverage is the most efficient and cost reducing way to provide for our health.
Even DickC heney would agree with that !!
I bet he'd agree with "defferments means life and freedom" - the more the better.
4 heart attacks, 5 defements, 2 (?) kids, (1) wife.
Daim, this socialist medicine is GOOD !!!!
Not for the working slugs, but for the corporate jockeys and their bettors.
What's amazing is that absolutely nobody has bridled the steed named Healthy Worker Productivity. Even before that great American financial meltdown of 2008, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded that $250 billion per year was lost to our economy because of worker illness and absenteeism. Another $180 billion per year was lost to workers who showed up sick and underperformed while passing along their germs.
How many of these do you think are the working poor - the 1:4 of us who earns less than $11.11/hour and who can't even dream of buying health insurance?
Our government is having to provide jobs and healthcare because big business is gnawing on the carrot named Dividends Any Which Way.
You do the math and stretch it over a decade - putting people to work while helping them to maintain their health and productivity is exactly what will pay for the healthcare reforms. All we've been fed is fuzzy math coasted with fear.
But, of course, you are misleading. Health care reform is about the advantages of a larger pool of insurance buyers, not about having you pay for someone else.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miles-mogulescu/the-real-reason-obamas-pl_b_473924.html