Carter Bundy
No matter how many ads from corrupt health care executives like Rick Scott (that’s not name-calling: He was the CEO of a company that just settled a $1.7 billion fraud suit) and the Republican Party you see, market forces aren’t going to reduce prices or add more choice in health care.
Why? Because the normal assumptions about markets and the principles that drive market capitalism to success simply don’t apply to health care.
Knowing that market forces don’t provide any realistic solution to our myriad health system flaws, the GOP has succeeded in turning the debate into whether government should be involved in health care. Of course, the little secret they and their tea party friends don’t like to admit is that it already is: It’s called Medicare.
The Medicare example
A lot of people think we’re in unchartered water. We’re not. There was a similar debate about 50 years ago when the closest analogy to public option in America — Medicare — was passed.
One of the craziest ironies of the entire health care debate is hearing from conservative seniors who say, all in one sentence: “Get the government out of health care, and don’t touch my Medicare!” Ummm…would you care to clarify?
If any of y’all reading this are over 65, or you have parents or grandparents who use Medicare, ask if it’s been a success. With a few exceptions, people wouldn’t trade Medicare for anything.
My dad, who is an independent but often has leaned towards more conservative candidates for a number of reasons, recently had prostate cancer. Fortunately he’s doing well now, thanks to surgery and treatment under Medicare. He’d had what he thought was good private insurance for most of his life, and continues to have private insurance.
Last Thanksgiving, we were out walking before dinner. He was gushing about how well Medicare worked when the chips were down. At one point, he asked “has anyone ever considered Medicare for everybody?”
Yes, yes they have. In fact, Medicare for all, or some kind of single payer system, is exactly what many Americans have wanted for decades.
But public option isn’t nearly as big a proposal as Medicare was. It’s still just one totally voluntary option — no one is making private insurance go anywhere. It won’t cover everyone, or even a majority of people in any age group.
Public option won’t be funded with mandatory, dedicated taxes like Medicare. In other words, public option is a more conservative, watered-down version of Medicare.
Democrats have already compromised by only pushing for this weaker, tamer version of Medicare. They’ve agreed to let people have a choice between private and public insurance, which seems pretty generous given the track record of private insurance. But that hasn’t bought them a bit of Republican love.
Now it’s partisan
The Democratic reform plans that have already passed committees in the House and Senate are, for most Dems, watered down versions of what they’d prefer. If Democrats water it down further by eliminating a public option — it’s just a choice for criminy’s sake! — they are going to virtually guarantee apathy and defections in the 2010 (and maybe 2012) elections.
Bailing on real health care reform is the surest way to lock down another 1994 revolution for the GOP. Don’t think Republican strategists don’t know that.
Senator Bingaman and others have gamely tried to reach bipartisan consensus on health care, and Senator Bingaman deserves praise for trying to strike a deal. But just a few minutes watching CNN shows that the national GOP is running ads against any health reform.
When you can pass something on a bipartisan basis, terrific. But when the other party is constantly stabbing you in the back?
At this point, why are you even in the room with them? How can Republicans like Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa look Senator Bingaman in the eye and say they truly want reform when Grassley personally bashes reform back home and spreads the bizarre Palin lies about “pulling the plug on grandma?”
Reagan whiffs, history repeats
If there’s one unifying voice for Republicans today, it’s the ghost of Ronald Reagan. Palin quoted Reagan’s famous admonition against “socialism” on the stump last fall.
What she didn’t mention is that Reagan’s rant was in a 1961 American Medical Association ad against, of all things, Medicare. Here’s what he said:
“Write those letters now. Call your friends, and tell them to write them. If you don’t, this program I promise you will pass just as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow. And behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country, until, one day… we will awake to find that we have socialism. And if you don’t do this, and if I don’t do it, one of these days, you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.”
No matter how much you may like Reagan, he whiffed on this one. There are a heck of a lot of freedom-loving, anti-socialist seniors who dig Medicare. It’s amazing how the Palin wing of the GOP is fighting on the wrong side of history again using virtually identical scare tactics to prop up a lucrative, but sick, system.
The only question is whether Democratic elected officials of 2009 will have the same backbone, compassion, courage, and vision that the Democrats of the 1960s had.
I’m betting history repeats itself and Dems get their act together to pass once-in-a-generation, real, important change. I’ll double down that even tea partiers praise the Dems’ work 50 years from now.
Bundy is the political and legislative director for AFSCME in New Mexico. The opinions in his column are personal and do not necessarily reflect any official AFSCME position. You can learn more about him by clicking here. Contact him at carterbundy@yahoo.com.