3 Poles in the Health Reform Debate

There are at least 3 narratives driving the health reform debates that need to be articulated and challenged.

1. The right-wing anti-social killer pit-bull perspective. Deserves closer scrutiny and analysis, and I’m not close enough to those people or their organizational links to say anything illuminating.

2. The Obama administration and many conservative Dems in Congress have proposed policies rooted in neoliberal economics that undermine the likely success of reform, and support for it. They perpetuate the fallacy that we can control costs by making health care work like a free market, forcing individuals to make choices about our health care by paying more out of our own pockets, and by choosing from a blinding array of health plans and benefits. In fact cost conscious consumers have no power in a market dominated by mega corporations: hospitals, drug and insurance companies.

This viewpoint has driven most of the bad policy decisions the White House has made and has threatened to drive a stake into the heart of the support for reform. Americans may or may not be ready for Medicare for All but we are damn familiar with what the insurance industry is doing to us. Whatever the policy merits of the public option, abandoning it is, was and will be a serious misstep politically. The Administration may not have the power to get rid of the insurance industry entirely. But it is giving away plenty in subsidies and other forms of life support to AHIP members. It is not fighting for the public option and a standardized benefit package and progressive financing in part because the economic gurus at the White House don’t believe in them.

3. Liberals and progressives have worked hard this year. We might have come out swinging in January fighting for a Medicare-for-all, single payer system. We didn’t. Obama’s decision not to go that route was seen as insurmountable, so no one really tried seriously. Recognizing that we would not achieve single payer this year, progressives turned either to improving the bill, or to public education on single payer without any expectation of influencing the national bill. While many of us advocated both for single payer and for a better national bill, it was left largely to HCAN and various offshoots of the Obama campaign, both constrained by direct links to the Democratic Party, to fight for the merits of progressive proposals like the House’s bill. At this point there are three divergent themes that lead the discussion astray:

a. "It's all determined by corporate money." Corporations hold great sway over political life and decisions. And their money works in part through direct contributions to candidates. But voters matter too. Corporate money sways public opinion. We have a better story and so can we.

b. "We'll fix it in the states. The way to get around this problem is to get active on the state level, where we can more easily get rid of the health insurance industry." There are some progressive state campaigns, no question. But not surprisingly, corporations have figured out how to influence state houses too, many of which meet infrequently and briefly.

c. From one blogger: “The best thing that could happen to Obama (and America) is for Congress to FAIL at passing any health legislation. That would give Obama the chance … to say 'OK, we now know that the system is beyond any rational attempt to repair it. We are starting from scratch.'”

Proposing, at this point, that failing entirely to pass a reform bill will clear the decks for a progressive resurgence defies belief. It is quite clear what the result will be.

I believe that defeating the bill now would not open policy space for further progress. It would leave the insurance industry in the same powerful position it is in now. If we fail to pass a bill, the real dedicated and out front enemies of equity and community will be back in the ascendance politically. If we fail, corporate America has open season. We need to continue to build the power and vision of a progressive movement. I see no scenario in which defeating health reform would hasten that agenda.

If we pass it we get – if we fight for it – more standardization and regulation; more guarantees that employers will actually pay in to the system for benefits, the hope of fewer deaths and bankruptcies due to uninsurance.

The House Progressive Caucus has an agenda we should support. Loudly, proudly and actively. We can fight for single payer and fight for fair financing, progressive standards for affordability, and a stronger public sector – through expanded Medicare, a public option or whatever. It is not up to us to bail out a wrong-minded Administration but it is up to us to challenge their ideas and support our allies in Congress for the policies and strategies they actually believe in.

Won’t defeating the bill automatically generate a new progressive movement, with dynamic candidates, platforms and mobilizations? Nice thought. We certainly need all that. I admit it, here’s where my crystal ball gets cloudy. Ralph Nader’s recent novel imagines a bail-out by visionary billionaires like Warren Buffett. I think people like to win, and after they win they’re ready to fight for more. I felt that way on Nov. 4, 2008. It is going to take some serious thinking and working to get back to that place. There is, though, no alternative.