Photo: A sign at the 9/12 project's march on Washington D.C./Andrew Aliferis, used under Creative Commons license On life support: Reforming the healthcare industry
Meg Lanker
Monday, November 30, 2009 9:22 PM MDT
No one could have predicted the peculiar turns the healthcare debate took.
One of the most jarring sprung from the plethora of town-hall meetings in August. Gun-rights advocates claimed that the healthcare debate is bizarrely and inextricably tied to an imaginary push to deprive Americans of the right to bear arms, illustrated by a man who carried an AR-15 assault rifle strapped to his back outside a town hall meeting with the president in Phoenix, Ariz.
This followed national coverage of a New Hampshire man openly carrying a gun in a thigh holster at another Obama town hall meeting while holding a sign stating, “It’s time to water the tree of liberty,” – a partial quote from Thomas Jefferson, who said, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
Another claim about gun rights fired up the masses again when Gun Owners of America began circulating the claim that the Baucus health care bill would ban guns used for self defense. The group derived this from provisions in the bill allowing for higher premiums for tobacco users – this provision is then extrapolated by the group and right-wingers to include other “risky” behaviors like gun ownership. Non-partisan group PolitiFact.com rated the claim as “false” and said, “Every behavioral factor explicitly cited in the bill concerns pure medical issues, such as a lowered cholesterol level, maintenance of a certain body mass index, quitting smoking or losing a specified amount of weight.”
Gun owners continue to show up and pack heat at what should be peaceful town hall gatherings and rallies but have become free-for-all melees of shouts about socialism and racism and fascism and every fear-mongering “ism” in the book. The consequence of the town hall debacles in August have led to a serious reluctance to even consider speaking to constituents on anything related to health care reform.
Thankfully, these self-styled guerillas of freedom haven’t killed anyone – indeed, there were no arrests for gun violence, but police have arrested a few for unlawful possession of a firearm. But, as one Phoenix police officer explained to the Associated Press the simple presence of a man with a large rifle “sparked a lot of emotions.”
Perhaps those Americans who were angry, or distressed, or sickened by the sight of a man with an assault rifle at a presidential event recalled what happened when another man brought a rifle to a presidential parade in Texas. Or when a man brought a rifle to hear a Baptist preacher speak about civil rights in Tennessee. Or possibly the sight evokes the unmerciful memory of hearing a heart-lurching knock at the door in the early morning hours after being identified as the next-of-kin.
And the pundits and politicians. The cries of socialism and marches to communism and the figurative beating of breasts deserve an Oscar or ridicule, depending on which side Americans take. Glenn Beck weeps as he speaks of rationing and whether or not citizens will be considered valuable enough to keep alive. Sarah Palin warns us of the death panels that would have decreed her son, born with Down Syndrome, not important enough to birth. Representative Michele Bachmann warns of schools allowing 13-year-olds to receive abortions and then be put back on the bus to go home, with mom and dad none the wiser. Americans were warned by health insurance companies that a shadowy government entity would come between them and their doctors – warned by the very industry of bloodsuckers spawned by coming between patients and doctors.
The most outrageous lies are the ones most readily believed by the right-wing desperate to get the government out of their Medicare – forget the ridiculousness of that statement because the fear, to them, is real.
Thanks in part to the scare tactics, and in part to the powerful health insurance lobby, the U.S. House passed a watered down bill Nov. 7 with a weakened public option and insurance mandates. The bill also included sweeping abortion restrictions under the Stupak amendment, added at the last minute to appease Blue Dog Democrats, several of which voted for the amendment and not the final bill. The new legislation has little cost controls and opens a market previously unavailable to the health insurance industry of impoverished Americans. The lone Republican who voted for the bill, Rep. Joseph Cao of Louisiana is now targeted as a traitor by his own party.
The House bill is an insurance company’s wet dream.
How did it get to this point?
Way back in 2008, in a campaign that seems hazy from the almost-euphoric high generated by the possibility of change, the Republican Party painted Barack Obama with the pinko tint of socialism or communism, depending on the crowd. John McCain and Sarah Palin fervently assured us that Obama wanted to take away our freedoms to worship, to choose our doctors, to stroll around in a public place with an assault rifle. He was not one of us, and probably a terrorist, dontcha ya know? He pals around with bad dudes and they probably even have a book club led by that Saul guy.
After the election, the Republican Party was eager to prove it was not in the death throes of a movement long past its era or usefulness. It jumped on the opportunity to become the party of Americans who want things to stay the way they were, back when credit was plentiful and so was the cheap plastic crap at Wal-Mart. Back then, the free market throbbed with excitement as houses were erected one right after another and purchased with no down payment and credit terms arranged.
But that was way, way back in 2005, when everyone wanted flip houses and flipped for house they couldn’t afford, either through enticement into sub-prime mortgages or pure unencumbered desire. Americans didn’t notice the spiraling cost of health care as much because they all had jobs and money, and besides, the emergency room treats anyone who walks in. U.S. citizens didn’t really need all those silly civil rights and those inane leftists had themselves in a tizzy over Gitmo. Remember, kids, it’s the first and second amendment rights that really get things done.
It’s this last principle that sees America in its present predicament. It’s my first amendment right to shout the loudest at the nearest town hall, to warn my fellow citizens of impending socialism and I’ve got the second amendment to back that one up should some peacenik think otherwise. The right-wingers have transformed the blissfully ignorant into the fearfully ignorant and unleashed the Tea Party people, the birthers, the conspiracy theorists, and the garden-variety lunatics upon the issue of “socialized medicine,” leading disgruntled seniors to scream about the government keeping their hands out of their goddamned Medicare and Sarah Palin to write on Facebook about evil Obama’s plan for “death panels.”
Their scare tactics bordered on the barely factual to the absurd. In the barely factual column, the right-wing continues to warn of rationing, which already happens when insurance companies decide to cover treatment or not, which treatment is appropriate, and how long patients need treatment. Dismiss the silly rationing idea based on rich versus poor since all the poor have to do is go to the ER or ask their church for help. In the absurd column, there’s the reviewed and revised summary of HR 3200, “adapted on July 29, 2009, by the Liberty Counsel from the original authored by Peter Fleckenstein and posted on FreeRepublic.com.”
These claims, embraced and distributed by conservative groups like the national 9/12 Project, include this gem: “Sec. 2511, Pg. 992 – Government will establish school-based ‘health’ clinics. Your children will be indoctrinated and your grandchildren may be aborted!”
I highly doubt this – typical school health clinics include first-hand education on not putting rocks in your nose versus putting tab A into slot B; plus, an abortion is fairly time-consuming procedure requiring a physician and not many students can get out of class long enough to surreptitiously smoke cigarettes, much less abort their unborn.
These claims, which seem to have originated with Mr. Fleckenstein, continue to appear in chain emails supposedly authored by this or that constitutional scholar urging people to call their congressman and tell them to vote no on reform.
These are also the alarmist assertions parroted by Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn. She insists that creationism is valid science and claims swine flu originated with Democratic administrations, and yet, people still take her seriously. She also said she will run for president in 2012 if God tells her she should. Let’s hope God doesn’t get the hint.
Bachmann also spurred a large “press conference” (read: protest rally) Nov. 5 on the steps of the Capitol Building – a rally which featured signs depicting Obama as Hitler and Mao. Among the most distasteful was a large banner depicting naked concentration camp victims piled in a mass grave with a caption reading “"National Socialist Health Care, Dachau, Germany 1945." Several of her fellow Republicans stood grinning behind the podium. This is apparently the new base for the GOP.
These incongruous declarations do not seem to be based in any kind of reality. Instead, they surface from a deep, dark alternate universe – a place fixed in the psyche of many white, working class, older Americans. It’s the persistent fear of the other, of change, of deviation from the norm. These are the folks that lost their jobs at the plant after they went overseas to kill little yellow people to bring them freedom. Their children and grandchildren are going into the desert to bring freedom to more ungrateful foreigners. These folks come home from a hard day’s work and see this smooth-talking black president on television telling them that he’s going to make him pay for the health care for other people’s children and grandchildren with their hard-earned paycheck.
That guy, with all the opportunities their children should have had but didn’t, is now telling Joe Schmoe and Jane Doe to give their money willingly to support people that they think have never known an honest day’s work. And it makes them angry. America is the land of bootstrap opportunity, not government-based handholding. And they’ll be damned if it will become a nanny welfare state.
So when they’re told to shout at their congressmen at the nearest town hall, or to rally on Sept. 12 or Nov. 5 in Washington D.C., then, by God, they’ll do what it takes to stop the socialists, the welfare cheats and the academic elitists in their tracks. They heard the horror stories about rationing in Canada and the months spent waiting for bypass surgery. Joe Schmoe can’t bear to think of his granddaughters going to kindergarten and learning how to slide on condoms instead of learning the alphabet. Jane Doe agonizes over the thought that her aged mother might have to face one of those death panels that Sarah Palin talks about in her folksy manner. So they’ll stop this day of reckoning from coming to fruition.
This is irrational, and yet, this stroking of panic over a long, strange summer was effective. The public option appeared to be headed for an unceremonious death several times. Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo. even felt comfortable enough to assure the people of this state that if it wasn’t for him, Wyomingites would have national health care. Perhaps the good senator may want to consider Health Care for America Now’s report on the health insurance industry currently bankrupting this country and Wyoming residents.
Health Care for America Now (HCAN) is comprised of more than 1,000 organizations in 46 states “representing 30 million people dedicated to winning quality, affordable health care.” According to their report released in June, the average combined cost of health insurance premiums paid by employers and workers climbed to $16,771 in 2009 for a family of four. This represents nearly one-third of a U.S. family’s median income.
How is this sustainable? HCAN points out that in Wyoming, insurance premiums rose 129 percent from 2000 to 2007, 4.6 times faster than median earnings rose in Wyoming. This is the fastest and highest rate of premium increase in the nation. For family health coverage in Wyoming during that time, the average annual combined premium for employers and employees rose from $5,605 to $12,824 - 26 percent of the median family's income and projected to reach 47 percent by 2016.
In Wyoming, 72,821 of 520,500 residents are uninsured. These are Sen. Enzi’s constituents, the people to which he proudly announced his blocking of national health care.
Of course, all this is under normal circumstances. When a family member becomes ill, the problem of underinsured policy holders becomes clear. In 2007, 62 percent of Americans filing for bankruptcy said inability to pay medical bills was the key reason. Three-quarters of those filing had health insurance. In no universe does it make sense for working class people to oppose this reform.
But fear will make a person do peculiar things.
In August, Missouri resident Kenneth Gladney was allegedly involved in a fight at a town hall with members of the Service Employees International Union and later went to the ER claiming to have sustained multiple injuries. He was shown on a video of the incident quickly springing to his feet after appearing to trip on a curb. After jumping up from the ground, Gladney continued to shout at the SEIU representatives. He appeared later at another town hall to plead for donations to cover his mounting medical bills in a wheelchair, supposedly unable to speak – until he emerged on Fox News the next day. His appeal came at a protest against health care reform that would provide him with insurance, despite the fact he was recently laid off from his job. The irony was completely lost on the conservatives and rally attendees.
Hopefully the Republicans, the pundits, the tea partiers, and the right-wing, volatile fringe movement are pleased with what they hath wrought. Americans now know they’ve been spared the awful, horrible, inhumane health care the residents of Britain receive and would never trade for our current boondoggle of a system bankrupting citizens.
This health care “debate” is no longer a debate. It represents a strange and possibly dangerous turn in politics. This is potential mob rule via the ignorant and the U.S. Congressmen stirring this populist frenzy are playing with fire. The Democrats do not understand the fury either. They cannot comprehend the trepidation felt by many Americans because the liberal mentality does not deal in individual morality – it boasts the common good of society as its goal and the individual morality is intertwined with the benefit to society. It is no challenge to the GOP to paint “collectivism” to the uninformed as a horrible step toward communism.
At Bachmann’s health care rally, attendees held signs advocating violent revolution, compared the U.S. Congress to Nazi Party members, and several hanging effigies of various congressmen were the norm and not the exception. When did any of this become the desired political discourse? All this, as Congress debates health care reform that will surely benefit many of these people. They are patsies in a terrible corporate lie, as it has always been. The GOP must continue to count on populist dread since its remake as the party of big business or risk complete dissolution.
Greg Sargent wrote of a telling conference call in August where a Tea Party organizer stated: “The purpose of Tea Parties is not to find a solution to the health care crisis — it is to stop what is not the solution: ObamaCare.” The tea parties, for all the talk about “astroturf” and “faux populism,” do attract Americans who are worried about what the reforms will bring and who are angered over the bailouts, rising health care costs, unemployment, etc. However, simply blocking reform of any kind benefits no one but the health insurance industry.
Their rage is understandable and familiar. We liberals felt it for eight years under the Bush regime. But these folks are directing at the wrong people. Direct the anger at the insurance companies, the corporations who were "too big to fail," Ronald Reagan and his beginning of the end with the institution of neoliberal economic reforms. But do not throw it at the people trying to institute beneficial improvements to health care successfully for the first time in our nation’s history.
The real tragedy in the health care debate is that due to these horrendous bailouts coupled with two unwinnable wars running rampant over the national deficit, it is doubtful the U.S. can afford massive reforms of any kind. But we cannot afford to continue the way we have. A classic Catch-22 and too little, too late. The time for reform was with Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Nixon, even Clinton. Ted Kennedy must be weeping in the afterlife over this mess.
The U.S. Congress is not completely altruistic. Nearly every member is bought and paid for, courtesy of lobbyists sashaying through the aisles guaranteeing cushy campaign contributions. Are watered down bills and wrath-fueled tea parties the solution? Absolutely not. But no one seems to have an unambiguous solution and the 9/12 Glenn Beck acolytes are promised that what they’re being told to do is the solution.
Storming Nancy Pelosi's office and being arrested.
Holding signs about "Kenyan Obama", socialism, fascism, and Nazism.
Chanting "Kill the Bill" at the top of their lungs after Michele Bachmann told them on Sean Hannity’s show to come to D.C. and “scare” their congressmen into not voting for the bill.
The thought of the chaos possibly inherent in the 2010 elections is chilling. The U.S. Senate is beginning their debate on their own version of the bill today. Already, Beck and Hannity are calling for more marches in tirades laced with violent, revolutionary metaphors and absolutes.
There is no denying this is getting frightening.
Click here and here to view photos from Tea Party protests across the nation
