As Paul Krugman said yesterday in his column about the economy and the insufficiency of the stimulus plan, "It's time to talk to the people as adults."
The same is true for health care reform.
If we really want a health care system that improves the health of our nation, we have to put the health of our people ahead of the profitability of insurance companies.
Those, who oppose a public option and say it will lead to a single-payer plan and drive the private insurance companies out of business, may be right. To quote our X-VP, I say, "So?"
Actually, they would not be put out of business, but they would have to downsize or adapt to another kind of insurance. That idea is denounced as anti-business, socialized medicine, and un-American, and it is likely to ruin chances for the tepid public-option plan. And the insurance industry has millions of dollars in lobbying money to back it up.
But "Un-American"? What about the scandal that a nation as prosperous as ours has 47,000,000 of its citizens without health care insurance, which could easily be reversed with a single-payer plan? Which is more un-American?
Now there is some news from the numbers-crunchers in the Congressional Budget Office that suggest that the public plan (even far short of the single-payer plan) may also save a lot of money. We knew this intuitively and by common sense, but the CBO has leaked a preliminary estimate that a strong public plan option could save $150 billion over 10 years.
Do we have the political will to do it? Only if the administration talks to us like adults, as Obama has done on some other issues like race.
The public already supports the idea of a public plan. Now we must exert the pressure that the administration needs from us to "make" them do it.
Ralph
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This idea of Obama needing progressives to "make him do it," goes back to FDR. Yesterday, I heard the biographer of the great early civil rights leader A. Phillip Randolph speaking on NPR.
ReplyDeleteHe told about Randolph's being invited to the White House by FRD for dinner and a chat. FDR asked him what his people needed and how he could help.
After Randolph outlined the needs as he saw them, FDR said to him, "I agree with most of the things you say, but now you must make me do it."
Meaning, of course, that he would like to do it and he needed the active support of the people demanding the change so he could use this to convince the opposition.