In order to pass a robust health care bill, Democrats need to re-frame the debate with a strong, disciplined messaging campaign. They have the power, the truth, and public approval on their side, but they're slacking badly on messaging, and it's putting reform in jeopardy.
Republicans and industry groups, meanwhile, have permeated the debate with a flurry of disinformation and outright lies. They've somewhat succeeded in slandering the reform as anti-capitalist, blighting it with idioms like "big government," "socialism," "death panels," and so on.
The reaction among leading reformers has had a deer-in-the-headlights ring. It's odd that President Obama didn't see this coming because he usually knows his history, and these despicable tactics have been repeatedly used to kill health care reform for nearly a century, each time preying on people's political prejudices and limited knowledge.
But it's not too late, and Obama can still turn this around -- with better messaging.
Unhinged free-market worship, combined with an inexplicable paranoia for anything government, is what's driving the opposition. So Obama and Democrats need to re-frame this bill -- particularly the public option -- as one that embraces capitalism's best principles.
The central message should be that this bill will increase choice and competition in the marketplace, which would lower costs and extend coverage. This is language that Americans of all political persuasions understand, and it would considerably help quell the senseless fears among conservatives and some moderates about any kind of "government takeover" of the system.
A recent poll reveals that when told that the public plan is merely a "choice," a whopping 77 percent of Americans support it. The number shrinks when it's presented as the "Obama health care plan," which means the propaganda has been quite successful.
So, why not change the name of the bill? "Health Security Act" has no ring to it; call it the "Health Care Free Choice Act." That'll take the opposition to task and put them on the defensive.
A crucial point Democrats need to drive home is that inaction will lead to economic ruin for the country and financial insolvency for more and more individuals, families and businesses. It will. The out-of-control health care costs are the primary cause of the surging budget deficit, as well as bankruptcies, which are literally rising by the minute.
The GOP calls this reform plan an "experiment" -- nefariously suggesting that it could go very, very wrong. But the real experiment would be to embrace the status quo, simply to assume private insurers will shape up and fix the system without any real pressure. Democrats need to make this abundantly clear.
The main reason health care costs are skyrocketing -- and worsening the deficit -- is that insurance executives realized they can use their virtual monopoly power to make higher profits by refusing to provide care for sick customers even if they've fully paid their premiums. That's where much of the excessive costs are going.
Insurers insist that premiums have risen in proportion to provider costs. But this is glaringly dishonest -- insurer profits have risen alongside higher premiums, making it clear that the reason regular people are paying exorbitant prices is so insurance executives and shareholders can line their pockets.
A public option will keep this in check. It's the ideal market-oriented solution that would bring down costs, extend coverage, increase quality and improve efficiency. It would motivate private insurers to clean up their act and realize that profits should be based on providing quality services at reasonable prices -- not shady boardroom tactics that fleece people.
The New York Times says the public plan is "not indispensable," that stronger insurance regulations can solve most of these problems. But this sounds like icing a broken leg that needs surgery. Insurers might behave themselves for a while, but eventually they'll sneak in loopholes to derail those rules, and return to their old ways.
And that's why a public option is critical if Democrats want a real, substantive victory for health care, rather than merely a shallow political victory. The tell-all as to how badly the negotiations are going so far is the insurance industry's reaction to them: "Hallelujah!"
Make no mistake, there is no such thing as worthy reform that doesn't infuriate insurance executives.
It's sad that this is so tough, that Democrats continue to get bullied by Republicans despite thrashing them in the last two elections. But their silver lining is the sheer silliness of most Republican talking points on health care. By positioning the public option as a market-based solution to the system's problems, the opposition can be defeated on its own turf.
Now, with much of America's economic and health future riding on this bill, let's see if Democrats can rise to the challenge and be effective champions for truth and common sense.
Listen to Sahil Kapur's recent radio interview on Talk 1410AM about the health care battle.
Follow Sahil Kapur on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sahil_Kapur
Your reccomendation plays right into that meme.
I want to thank those on my right, as well as the others here, for keeping it civil and arguing actual ideas and not personalities or point-scoring.
I'll check back in later.
"We are individuals who seek for ourselves and our families first and then for others if, and when, it serves our needs."
Your concept defies the definition of society. It typifies the modern conservative mindset perfectly, but that it is a contra-survival pattern is proven by the recent economic crash. It is also proven by the fact that "looking out for one's self" as the template for our capitalization of medicine has produced an unsustainable status quo - where the holders of the monopoly on the the right to treat have priced their services beyond the ability of their customers to pay, and the holders of the monopoly on the financing of medicine have likewise priced their service beyond the ability of the market to bear.
And yet prices continue to escalate, beyond all logic.
The inability of a population to afford a necessity of life is evidence that countervailing pressures against the result of the "free market" have become necessary. This was how we got anti-trust legislation, labor unions, voting rights and equal rights laws, etc. etc. Self-interest as practiced by those with a monopolistic hold on monetary or social power proved (as it is proving now) destructive to society, and hence its members.
They are both constructs that that no human can see, hear, smell, touch, or taste, that are both far too abstract to be comprehended in totality by the human mind, and the justification for the existence of each is measured only in personal anecdote and/or faith, but which nonetheless impose moral duties in the non-abstract workings of day-to-day life that usually involve the oppression of those who do not agree.
People have faught and died for both... but both are mere figments of the flawed human psyche.
Tell a sociologist that "society" is a figment of his imagination.
Granted, owing to the infinite variety of character and characteristics of humans, "society" as a subject can be so deep and changeable that no one can ever understand it in its totality.
But the basic of society, collective survival, is not mysterious and is not in question. It is as real as your keyboard and, ultimately, much more valuable.
The economic crash was created by government, in the form of the Fed - who offerred free money - and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac who underwrote and securitized 80% of all mortgage transactions.
Basically, the government gave out free money to the lenders and then insured them against loss.
At the same time, on November 15, 2007, FAS 157 passed - forcing the non-underwriters (holders of the securities) to mark down trillions in asset value.
What caused this was the combination of government intervention (via monetary policy), governement welfare (in the form of laying off risk), and government regulation (in the form of a ridiculous accounting rule) - yes, and with the actual exectution of the utterly perverse incentives created by government in the marketplace (the "greedy banks").
The true "contra-survival pattern" is having any trust of people who have no incentive to perform one way or another (the government) - and should have us all out in the streets with torches and pitchforks riding the politicians and beareaucrats out of Washington on a rail.
The "free market" in health care - and the escalation of costs - was not created by the free market but by a large myriad of factors - nearly each one of which is tied to a government intervention, regulation and/or the structure of the laws.
Don't even try to tell me that health care is a free market... or I'll have to force you to read the collective 60,000 pages of federal
In fact, the more I read it, your entire comment is libertarian talking points.
You are right, that government intervention (licensing physicians and prohibiting wage increases during WWII) were the triggers for our current health care debacle - but human greed, monopolization of finance and services, a captive consumerate, and the "free market" (a fairy tale if ever there was one), leveraging off the controls in place, brought us to where we are now.
A number of individuals of a species, organized as a community or group, and outlined by the bounds of *functional interdependence.*
A society enables individual members to fulfill needs, aims or desires that they could not fulfill separately, and enables the fulfilling of group needs, aims or desires.
In other words, the purpose of society is to operate in a fashion which promotes and enhances the survival of the members thereof, as well as of the society as a whole.
If we are a society, we owe the necessities of survival, including health care, to our members.
Why should I work my tail off to be successful so that someone else can have the fruits of my labor? How does that motivate me to continue to be successful?
Paying taxes for the common good, such as national defense, infrastructure, and commerce is one thing. Taxing someone so you can give entitlements to someone else is something completely different.
Societies pool resources. It is not a taking, it is a commons.
Pooling resources (via insurance) is what you are doing now, in order to pay for a service which, insulated from market pressures, has become too expensive for you to bear alone in a crisis. The chief problems are two: 1) healing has been monopolized by conventional medicine, which is therefore partly insulated from price pressure, and 2) your pooled resources are being stolen and used against you by the persons you entrusted to manage the pool - further, these same embezzlers are in collusion with the monopolistic medical professionals to artificially support prices.
A "Public Option" or even a single payer is a scheme to pool resources fairly rather than criminally.
Nice plan Mr. Johnny Come Lately. They've been pushing this lie. It ain't working.
This is not about taking from the productive and giving to the non-productive. Stop recycling that Atlas Shrugged fantasy and letting it blind you to reality. This is about an unsustainable cost that will cost the productive much more than the non-productive in the near future in terms of a much larger percentages of your income feeding health insurance troughs and declining coverage that you will need as you age. Unless you're one of the super rich 1% which I doubt, this WILL be your problem before you know it and you will regret that you allowed arrogance and ideology to facilitate your own undoing.
If this were just about providing a "choice", why hasn't it been done already? Why can't one of the larger private non-profit organizations set it up? Just start offering low-cost insurance to the high-risk people who need it. Then any excess revenue can be used to offer coverage to the needy. As long as it self-sustaining, why does this have to be a government venture?
The argument that somehow a "public option" will lower health care costs still is not clear. The author seems to be saying that health care is expensive because insurance companies make money. That doesn't work, logically. If the public plan will use price-fixing to drive costs lower, that might work in the short run, but that is not very "market-oriented" nor will it be without effect on the market as a whole.
Luckily, it looks like the American people can see through this propaganda, no matter how it is repackaged.
If there is no reciprocal duty within society to care for each other, then there is no such thing as society. Even wolves recognize this. The pack cares for an injured member and nurses them back to health - for the good of the pack. They do not abandon their efforts until the injured wolf is well, or dead. To the very last moment, they will lick its wounds, bring it food, and stand guard over it. The hunt is not the only meaning of the pack. All aspects of survival are. Similarly with gibbons, howler monkeys and capuchins. For the society not to perish, its members must not perish.
Are we not better than beasts? Can we not see that if survival is a right, then care is a right? I submit that we are better, and that we can see.
There is a RIGHT to health care. Access to health care is a human RIGHT.
The right to life recognized in our founding documents is not merely a right not to be killed. It is an affirmative right to life. Its observance requires action by the members of society. We are called upon to defend the lives of others - and can be criminally prosecuted for failing to do so. If we have knowledge of a crisis, an emergency or a crime which threatens the life of another, our duty is to mitigate it, prevent it, and/or report it. To fail to do so can rise to the level of accessory, or criminally negligent homicide.
The absence of access to health care is a clear and present threat to life.
Right to life means the right to live your life as you see fit. To confiscate one mans property to give to another man (i.e. entitlements) is a transfer of rights from one man to another.
Don't really know much about the law, do you? Irrespective of "stop and render aid" or "good samaritan" laws, all jurisdictions criminalize failure to render aid under varying circumstances.
If it's a moral obligation, then it is an obligation. Laws codify moral obligations or they are illegitimate. "...morally obligate.." What do you think rights ARE if not moral obligations to one another?
No one exists in a vacuum. You may live your life as you see fit, only to the degree that you do so without harming others. Failing to act when aid is needed is just as wrong, in both legal and natural terms, as taking destructive action. To withhold the necessities of life causes harm.
If you don't like the benefits and obligations of society, then you are free to leave it.
For this reason, we are constitutionally barred from withholding air, water, food, shelter and medical services from felons in our prisons.
Inmates forfeit their rights, including the rights to liberty and to the pursuit of happiness; and retain only the basic human right to life. Hence, anything they receive while in detention can be seen only as incidental to the right to life. We feed them that they may live. We treat their ills that they may live. We regulate temperature and provide bedding that they might not fall ill.
If the rights to nutrition, shelter and medical aid do not inhere in the right to life, then the right to life is without meaning.
The common worker, the impoverished and the marginalized have a right to affordable access to no less care than we provide to the worst among us.
We recognize our duty as a society to preserve the lives of our fellows by providing, if nothing else, sanitation, clean water, fire services and police services. At their root, these health and safety provisions are life-preserving measures. They protect the right to life.
It is not a promise to be protected from fate, or nature, or your own mistakes in order to ensure that you have the "necessities" of life.
I would agree that a "good" person is concerned for the lives of those around him. I don't agree that this there is a fundamental right to be cared for, especially as a function of government.
You have mis-defined the right to life. Were that the case, we would not have to render medical aid to prisoners - even death row inmates - a duty which the Supreme Court has held arises in the constitutional right to life.
If a dying man appears in an emergency room and has no money, he must be treated. It's the law. Why? Not because the law dictates socialized medicine, but because to have to capacity to save a life and to refuse to do so violates the right to life. It is tantamount to murder. It is merely a matter of degree.
He is correct.
When John Dingell of MI remarked that the last time he saw such venom, it was during the days of "Ku Klux Klan folks and white supremacists and folks in white sheets," Pat Toomey of PA defended the mobs, accusing Dingell of "wildly insulting ordinary, honest, decent, hard-working American people."
It is incumbent upon us to remember that those who doggedly, sometimes violently and criminally, resisted racial equality in the 50’s and 60’s were “ordinary, honest, decent, hard-working American people." They were elected officials, law enforcement officers, soldiers, small business owners, housewives, common laborers. The assumed decency of the malcontents imputes no credibility to their hysteria. Their “everyman” message that universal access to care deprives them of “their rights” and “their country” must NOT carry the day.
There is a RIGHT to health. Access to health care is a human RIGHT
I know they shoot people who are trying to leave, but I'm not sure what the rule is for people trying to get in to take advantage of the high-quality health care.
Best of luck, though.
If something requires the participation of another to occur, then it cannot be a right.
For example, what if all the doctors just said "no" and refused to provide services? Do doctors have the right to say "no"? If there is nobody to provide the service, then how can it be a right?
If the doctors don't have the right to say no, and the services they provide are the right of another - presumably enforced by the brute, armed force of government - then that is nothing short of slavery.
Last I heard, a society that enslaves its citizens to the purposes of the state is not a free one.
Oh yeah... say "hello" to society for me.... it's been a while since I've talked to a figment of the collective imagination and intellectual construct used by the left in political discourse to justify taking the actual rights of actual human beings - and occasionally, throughout history, throwing them in ovens.
Refusal to treat is grounds for loss of one's medical license.
It is not slavery - it is a) volunteering for a field in which the members are aware they are swearing a duty to society and b) part of the price of admission to an elite club which owns the healing license.
Medicine is and has always been, a public service. If a person is not willing to be in public service, they must not enter medicine.
Proper messaging builds support.
The talking points of the Rabid Right, though false, are stark and too simple. Hence, they are sticking and gaining ground. We need something equally simple.
This is the message:
There is a RIGHT to health. Access to health care is a human RIGHT.
President Obama has adopted similar language, "moral imperative" in recent days.
As long as big insurance trade groups are on board, I'm going to be smelling a rat. Those people don't give a d*mn about our welfare. Right now, they're playing both sides of the fence, supporting the concept and running vague support ads, but drumming up irrational fear about the public option.
Reform without a strong public option is a sellout.