Truth-telling and Responsibility in Health Care
I have said that one important moral principle for the health care debate is truth-telling. For decades, the physical health and well-being of our country has been a proxy battle for partisan politics. Industry interests and partisan fighting are once again threatening the current opportunity for a public dialogue about what is best for our health-care system. What we need is an honest and fair debate with good information, not sabotage of reform with half-truths and misinformation.
Yet in recent weeks, conservative radio ads have claimed that health-care reform will kill the elderly (it won't), that it will include federal funding for abortion (it doesn't), and that it is a socialist takeover of the health-care system (it isn't). The organizations promoting these claims, including some Religious Right groups, are either badly misinformed, or they are deliberately distorting reality.
A particularly egregious example is an ad that the Family Research Council has run in selected states. It depicts an elderly man and his wife sitting at their kitchen table. He turns to his wife and says, "They won't pay for my surgery. What are we going to do?" He continues, "and to think that Planned Parenthood is included in the government-run health care plan and spending tax dollars on abortion. They won't pay for my surgery, but we're forced to pay for abortion."
These kinds of ads should be stopped. They do not contribute to the debate that is needed to ensure that all Americans have access to quality, affordable health care. It is rather exactly the kind of misinformation campaign that could destroy needed reform. We should all denounce these ads and urge that the debate be about the real issues.
President Obama said, "I think we also have a tradition of, in this town, historically, of not financing abortions as part of government-funded health care. Rather than wade into that issue at this point, I think that it's appropriate for us to figure out how to just deliver on the cost savings, and not get distracted by the abortion debate at this station." There is growing agreement from both pro-life and pro-choice that health-care reform should not include funding for abortion, but should be abortion-neutral. We will continue monitoring the ongoing legislative process to maintain that principle.
Even worse than advertising, since Congress has gone into its summer recess, organized protests are being mounted at local town hall meetings. The Washington Post reported this morning that Democrats have been met by taunts, jeers, and, in one case, an effigy. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Tex.) was confronted by some 200 people holding signs calling him a "traitor to Texas" and a "devil to all people." And the Post cited a "'strategy memo,' issued by the Connecticut-based group Right Principles, which calls on conservatives to 'pack the hall' and 'yell out and challenge' lawmakers."
We must all say loudly and strongly that misinformation and angry mobs are not how democracy functions. While freedom of speech and freedom of assembly are certainly our rights, those rights must always be exercised with responsibility and accountability.
Health care reform that will provide quality, affordable health care for all Americans is essential. It is a moral imperative that in a nation as prosperous as ours, no American should go without health care, especially the poorest and most vulnerable among us. Reasonable people may differ on how best to accomplish this goal, and I welcome the rigorous policy debate currently under way in the House and Senate. But in the final analysis, it should be a moral priority for all of us.
I urge you to write your member of Congress, attend local town meetings in your communities, and respectfully but strongly make these points. It is our moral obligation as people of faith.
Jim Wallis is the author of The Great Awakening
To learn more about health-care reform, click here to visit Sojourners' Health-Care Resources Web page.
Follow Jim Wallis on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jimwallis
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See http://www.factcheck.org/2009/08/abortion-which-side-is-fabricating/ . The health care reform bill will, in fact, include federal funding for abortion. Those who are concerned about this have good reason to be, and ridiculing them in posts such as this one is unfair and unwarranted.
I have met very few people who are actually opposed to reforming our health care system. Rather, some oppose the particular way in which it is being proposed that we do this. We agree on ends - we just don't agree on means. That is legitimate.
MediaCurves.com just conducted a study with 605 viewers of an anti health care reform ad by the Family Research Council (FRC). The results showed the all parties reported that "anger" was the emotion they felt most while watching the commercial. The study also revealed that 64% of Democrats, 81% of Republicans and 71% of Independents indicating that the ad was either extremely effective or somewhat effective. For more in-depth results, please visit http://www.mediacurves.com/HealthCare/J7497-FRCAd/Index.cfm.
Thanks,
Ben
To all you GOP individuals out there...
If universal healthcare is so BAD then why is the U.S. the only advanced nation without it? Moreover why hasn't one single country gone back to a for profit capitalistic private healthcare system and abolished their own universal care system?
How can you rage against reform because it will "RESTRICT everyone's choices" and yet you also are against reform because it doesn't RESTRICT covering abortions?
If government healthcare is so bad then why aren't you proposing that we strip veterans of their VA and Tricare benefits? Why don't you propose stripping the poor of their Medicaid benefits? Why don't you propose stripping seniors of their Medicare benefits? Why of all people hasn't one single GOP member voluntarily given up their own government health care benefits package yet? Why haven't you proposed forcing all the above mentioned individuals into the private health insurance market if government health care is so awful?
One more thing as ultraconservative as you GOP supporters are why haven't you advocated one of your core values.... Everyone needs to take personal responsibility for living a perfect healthy lifestyle and eating a perfect diet so we can all reduce long term costs to the health care system?
I'm a medical professional and would love to hear your answers. Just so you know I've actually spent hours researching how to best achieve universal care in America and here is my very well referenced article regarding this - http://bit.ly/9QLV8
"If universal healthcare is so BAD then why is the U.S. the only advanced nation without it?"
I don't know, why has the USA risen to the top at just about everything?
Why do many of the leaders from those nations come here to get care?
"I don't know, why has the USA risen to the top at just about everything? "
You mean like useless wars started, percentage of population incarcerated, national debt, national debt as percentage of GDP, national debt per capita, highest infant mortality, lowest life expectancy for industrialized nation, lowest level of education per capita, highest medical cost, like that?
And we do have the best care, if you can afford it.
If you cannot afford it, too bad, it's not happening.
http://apnews.myway.com//article/20090809/D99VD2N01.html
"One major catch is that the consumer protections would not be available immediately. They are timed to take effect alongside government subsidies to help people buy coverage. In the House Democratic legislation, the coverage expansion would come in 2013 - after the next presidential elections. Part of the reason for the delay is to make the costs of the bill appear more manageable. "
How could we ever wish to create a Health Care (vs the Sick Care we have now)?
Go turn on the television. Change channels from lowest to the highest, and tell me, how many ads for pills did you just see? Now how in the world could we ever get true information from for-profit media when so much of their revenue is generated by the very industries we are trying to reform?
This issue is not about what we need for Health Care, it is about how broken America is. This is a battle between private profit and social justice. Guess who holds all the cards?
True to form, NPR continues perpetrating lies about these fake protests. In her kindergarten-teachery way, Leeann Hansen concluded that there's blame on both sides. It's the usual false equivalency baloney. And her guest from Politico went unchallenged when he said that Republicans fear that swastikas and racist slogans may appear at these rallies, as though they didn't appear on day one and at every town meeting since. Ms. Hansen may have pointed out that such violent imagery rarely if ever appears at rallies for liberal causes. In fact, liberals have recently been herded into protest zones down the block and around the corner, but paid insurance industry stooges get their mugs on the news every night, and they're validated every day on NPR.
NPR's propaganda is worse than anything Fox does, because they do it with the veneer of respectability. There's nothing to respect about NPR, as there is obviously nothing of substance in citizens protesting the prospect of having access to health care.
Think of greedy corporations as demons and the Republican party as demon-possessed.
These are the same tactics the NAZI party used to come to power in pre-WWII Germany.
The GOP does not know what TRUTH is!!!
Wallis states reasonable people may differ on how to accomplish healthcare for all. That's not true. There are 36 countries that provide superior healthcare for all of their citizens, with every country utilizing Single Payer. It is not reasonable, that the only industrialized country not utilizing Single Payer has any reasonable person offering a different solution.
Lies come and go but the truth remains what it is. http://www.wisecountyissues.com/?p=62 We must have health care reform.
There already is a public option that covers 45% of the population through Medicare, Medicaid, military service, or public service employment. Private insurance covers only slightly more than 30% of American residents. The real reason the private insurers don't want the public option extended to the uninsured is because they know their income will almost double if the government pays them to provide the coverage to the uninsured. Especially if the government goes after the people who don't contribute. It's almost government sponsored extortion. So the private health insurance lobby is applying bigtime pressure in conservative circles to distort the debate with misinformation and manipulation. No amount of pleading is going get them to play fair. The stakes are too high. Public option, they get nothing. No public option, private health insurance revenues will almost double.
Truth-telling...hmmm...
At his national press conference on July 23, ABC's Jake Tapper (one of the only mainstream journos pushing the President to tell the truth) asked the President to clarify what "sacrifices" Americans would have to make in signing on to his plan.
His response: "They're going to have to give up paying for things that don't make them healthier."
That's it? That's the truth-telling unbiased word from our exalted President. That's the rational discussion of trade-offs that are obvious in this policy. This is what's infuriating to many Americans - especially the 70+% who generally approve of their current plan.
Here's the thing, at the current rate of health insurance premium inflation, most policies become unaffordable within 5 years or less. Every year more businesses shift the premium burden to employees as the cost makes them less competitive and profitable. Something has to be done, and the key problem to be addressed is lack of efficiency, which is exactly what Obama very succinctly said.
To insinuate that this is ALL he has said on this issue is disingenuous.
Yeah, our exalted president, and those pushing for this plan are not forthright with the changes that will come. For example, by increasing competition in the health care insurance business those companies will be less able to skim off the cream before the bills are paid.
This will be a down side to spending by these companies in acquisitions of other business, high end commodities, and quality time spent with family, friends and colleagues at mountain retreats or oceanside paradise.
Come on, people...think of the children who will be deprived of their trust funds.
Increasing competion in health care insurance is a fantasy.
They have zero reason to do it, and every reason not to do it.
Or do you mean, competition like when you are in a hospital with a heart attack, you need to shop around for the cheapest heart surgeon?
If Henry Gates can get arrested in his own driveway for "tumultuous" behavior, where are the cops to arrest these people?
Maybe if Prof. Gates had just started screaming that Obama wants to kill old people and babies, the police would have left him alone.
cops are one minded. They are racists in many instances...they agree with the obstructionists..they do get their insurance ...and they are afraid. maybe if they could go in guns ablazing and tazor erupting...they would.
Thank you for the article Mr. Wallis. It is important for everyone to know their facts and most importantly, convey such facts and their feelings in discussions, town halls and on blogs with civility. If there is any place to start, this is it.
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