The current civic war over health care restructuring that's raging in Congress and across America is instructive to anyone who is interested in improving things anywhere. I often wonder why, 48 years after the establishment of the Peace Corp, or 90 years after the creation of the League of Nations (that held among its goals ending malaria, yellow fever, and preventing typhus epidemics) that progress, as measured by world health and poverty, seems so slow.
One thing we can see clearly in the midst of all the fog surrounding health care change in the United States is that a significant portion of the populace is terrified of change, so much so that even the thought of discussing change frightens them. Instead of attending town meetings and listening and asking, they would prefer that these town meetings not take place at all. For these millions of people, it is clear that they would prefer to hold on to the status quo.
But the status quo is a funny thing, an ephemera, something that never existed except in retrospect. The expression taken as a whole tells us why: status quo ante bellum -- the way things were before the war. It's an idea often invoked in peace treaties. Let's return part of this situation to the way it was before the war. But of course, if we did that completely, we would be returning ourselves to the exact same situation that gave rise to the war in the first place. The return to the status quo, then, means returning to the time and conditions that gave rise to upheaval. And to do so would cause an endless cycle of upheavals.
When the great U.S. Civil War came to an end the people of the United States shared no common vision of how to bind up the wounds of the nation. Just because the Confederacy had lost the armed struggle did not mean that a great mass of people did not still yearn for a world that preceded the war. I would venture that there are still pockets of sentiment in the South that yearn for the status quo, and I really do mean the status quo ante bellum of the Civil War. Ante bellum mansions, ante bellum thinking, ante bellum repression.
Now we are met on the battleground of a new war, currently a civic war, over the fundamental issue of how we, as a people, will care for each other, if at all. This battle has its origins in the founding of the country and even before then. So far the American people have agreed to fight wars together, fight fires together, build roads together, collect taxes together (with some serious dissent here and there) and educate our children together -- at least as a common effort. With the New Deal, we agreed to create some retirement security for our workers, and with L.B.J. we agreed to provide health care for our elderly.
The next step, if we're actually in this together, is health care as a right of citizenship. In the nations ranked among the world's first tier, America is generally dead last in health care statistics, and tops in cost. Most rational people see this as an indicator that there is a serious problem here. When one looks at economic forecasts for healthcare costs, it is not difficult to see that we will bankrupt ourselves if something isn't done.
It is fascinating that the debate, then, is not simply over what might be the best solution to the problem. That maybe as many as 25% of Americans prefer this thing called the status quo to any other approach tells us a great deal about human nature and just how great the challenge is when it comes to making progress of any kind. We are seeing clearly, for the first time in a great while, that when it comes to a need for major change, a great portion of the population of a supposedly modern democracy would prefer to do nothing. The status quo, no matter how flawed, dangerous and untenable, is preferable to even contemplating change.
When we finally do achieve health care restructuring, I hope that some of us will take a moment to look at that powerful human preference for the status quo over anything else, including reasoned discourse, and think about what it might take to bring that most change averse part of the population into a genuine conversation about anything that might bring about positive change. Maybe if we can solve that problem, we can unlock the secrets to human progress.
In the meantime, we'll always have Tara. Or will we? Unfortunately for those who would prefer to return there, Tara, the house from Gone With the Wind, was only a movie set. By 1959 the wood was ruined and the papier-mâché melted. Tara has been torn down. Only the front door remains, on view at the Margaret Mitchell Museum in Atlanta. If we really want to return to Tara we'll be able to do so. In our fantasies.