By Hootsbuddy
Readers of this blog are smart enough to use search engines so I don't have to do that for you. Those of us who have figured it out know that Betsy McCaughey has a long history of opposing health care reform, going back to the Clinton efforts of 1994.
McCaughey's health-care shtick in 1994 was to brag about having read all 1,000-plus pages of the bill and cite, with Biblical certainty, obscure provisions that made the Clintons look like serial killers.
She never went into obscurity but Sara Palin's headline-grabbing moment launching the death squad meme is a recapitulation of McCaughey's attack on the other attempt at reform fifteen years ago.
It's become a growing theme on the right: "Obamacare" will mean mandatory euthanasia for your grandmother in order to save money, and the person who created the ideological underpinnings for that policy is the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.
Here's the link to Alex Koppelman's Salon piece shredding this piece of misinformation. Have fun connecting the dots. H/T Noam Scheiber
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Today's Homily
We are in Trouble
It's sad that at a moment when Americans poised to repair much of what is broken, we find ourselves bruised by a sequence of traumatic events. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an economic crisis resulting in bankruptcies, personal/business credit squeezes, job losses and and a record-setting budget deficit now combine to shatter whatever credibility elected officials may have had. And before a way out of all these problems becomes clear, along comes a complicated piece of legislation that has become the brick on the wagon that finally makes the horse refuse to go a step further.
The passionate extremes exhibited a day or two ago have not gone, but there are more reports of public meetings with people seated instead of standing. They appear to be listening because fewer of them are yelling and making fists, but when its time to speak one fact is plain. A majority of constituents no longer trust representative whom they elected. More old than young (although all ages are represented), more white than other ethnic minorities (though I have seen a respectable number of Blacks and a few Asians) and a range of speaking styles from illiterate to articulate can be found in many news clips.
The common denominator, as I said, is a loss of credibility on the part of whoever is standing before them. Even when given a reasonable, truthful response to a constituent's concern the person responds face to face "I don't believe you!" And that retort is often applauded by the crowd.
This is serious. This is not the same as "I don't like it" or "Ya'll need to do better." When elected representatives lose credibility they next lose their jobs. If an ignorant majority do not have opinions changed by facts that even the dimmest among them can grasp, future elections will elect replacements even more ineffective than those now losing control.
This is not a gloom and doom warning coming from me. I'm not predicting a new fascism or some other tyranny. What I do see is a concentration of special interests competing for dollars. They include the drug and insurance industries, medical device manufacturers and profit making arrangements of all stripes having to do with the delivery of health care.
Note here: Physicians, administrators, researchers and allied professionals all the way to technicians and housekeepers must be well compensated in accordance with market principles in both not-for-profit and for-profit environments. I have seen that is possible from my own experience with of of the country's best health care systems so I am not advocating cutting wages or benefits for medical pros. This is not an attack of the marketplace. My comments here are not about health care professionals but about how some of those professionals allied with insurance and drug interests, use fear to manage and exploit that marketplace.
What I am saying is this:
- There are better ways than the status quo to do insurance, Medicare and Medicaid.
- Our elected representatives have worked hard to craft some improvements.
- Those improvements are not enough, but they are important, timely, non-threatening and overdue.
Trust is essential
The fabric of society depends on credibility. At some level we must trust others. Society is held together by the bonds of trust. Driving on two lane highways we trust oncoming drivers not to hit us. We allow the waitress to take our credit card to the cashier at the end of a meal, trusting that it will not be stolen or abused. We might get a second opinion in medical matters, but even then we trust that two or three physicians describing one or several alternatives are telling us the truth as they understand it. Our best decision-making relies on trusting other people.
One gauge of trust is how well we accept and agree to many details we really don't understand. How many people read the fine print when they download a piece of software? Or understand all the documents in a loan closing? (Not as many as needed to, it turns out.) When an appliance stops, how many people can read the electric schematic on the back and figure out what kind of electrical problem it has? In case of a 911 emergency we not only have to trust the response team to come promptly and take the right steps, we also have to believe them when they say if they don't do this or that someone may die, even if it seems dangerous or irrational. No need to go on. The point is simple. Credibility, another word for trust, is the bridge connecting risk and reassurance.
The insurance people understand this reality better than anyone. When I buy a life insurance policy on myself it only pays off when and if I dies. Think about that. I'm betting I'm not going to die and the insurance company is betting I'm going to live long enough that the premiums I pay earn enough money while I'm not yet dead to pay the insurance when death comes. Similarly health insurance is based on being part of a "risk pool." The insurance people know the numbers, and craft policies carefully written to insure themselves a profit along with insuring most of the risk pool they will really be "insured."
At some level we all understand these details. We don't want to think about them too much, but in the end when we pay for insurance we are buying more than a financial or legal safety net. We are buying peace of mind. Any good salesman will tell you that. Insurance products, whether auto, liability, health, life or any other are ostensibly about laws and money, But after all the rest is stripped away the common denominator is peace of mind. "Would you buy a used care from this man?" That is the first step in chipping away at credibility. Just look at him Listen to him. Decide for yourself if he is trustworthy. "Who do you want answering the phone in the White House at 3 AM?" Another unsubtle way to say someone is not trustworthty.
Credibility Must be Restored
So how best to defeat anythng originating in Congress? You already know. Destroy the credibility of the messenger and the message becomes irrelevant.
Last night I saw a clip of a Congressman from North Georgia meeting with his constituents. He started his meeting by holding three thick notebooks high over his head so all could see. He said words to the efffect "You want to know what I think of what's in this bill? This is what I think of it..." and he threw all three notebooks to the floor to the applause and delight of the crowd. The journalist coverning the story did find one courageous woman who pointed out that in Georgia are millions of citizens currently without insurance, but she was a pitiful minority of one and was speaking into deaf ears. The Congressman may know better, but he sure won't let his constituents know because like the insurance salesman he understands that credibility is more important than any other reality. He may understands that reality better than Bernard Madoff becuase he will be reelected, not tossed into jail.
And so it goes.
......Coda
Here is a collection of sincere opponents to a cap-and-trade summit a few days ago. According to the YouTube sidebar they were "significantly" outnumbered by supporters, but notice as you watch how completely the protesters mistrust elected representatives. This crowd displays the ignorance of birthers, climate change deniers, and conspiracy theorists. But underlying their ignorance is the same fear undergirding opposition to health care reform. A large and growing number of usually placid Americans are having their peace of mind shaken by fear.
This is a picture of people afraid and their fear was not set in motion by imaginary problems. When someone loses a house or a job, the shock waves don't stop with that nuclear family. Friends, neighbors and extended family also feel the stress, even if they are still in good shape. When the evening news becomes a litany of bad reports, the best of which is "it's still dropping but not as bad as it was," whether job losses, foreclosures or company failures, those reports nag at everyone. Add to the bad news an growing impression that bailouts of big interests were forthcoming but attempts to help little people are foundering. A growing uneasiness, a real dis-ease is setting in which is fertile ground for those who want to exploit the moment for ulterior motives.
Politicians deserve this mistrust!! When our political class screws the people so often allowing corporation's lobbyists to dictate what kind of legislation should be written, and sometimes by the corporate rep themselves they need to be fired!! Voted out of office.
ReplyDeleteWhy should corporate lobbyists be allowed to determine what the people should be able to have instead of the person voted into that office? Politicians are self-serving. They are also bought and paid for.
I completely agree. But there is a fly in the ointment called pork. All politicians are corrupt except mine, you know. When YOUR elected representative votes to spend money on aircraft that even the Pentagon says they neither need nor want he's pissing away public funds. But if he's MY representative (which in this case he happens to be) he's just looking out for jobs and security for his constituents. See how that works?
ReplyDeleteMultiply that by the number of elected representatives and you see the magnitude of the challenge. And that's just the money part. Your use of the phrase "political class" is apt, because it does, in fact, include them all. But the "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" concept is strictly for the movies. In real life the arrangements are far less straightforward.
There is a saying that any candidate whose platform is to rob Peter to pay Paul will always be assured of Paul's vote. That is the dynamic used by special interests, whether drugs, coal, oil, trial lawyers, gun owners, insurance, whatever... The name of the game is to put a bit of sugar into everyone's tea, but make sure the ones most apt to do what you want THIS term get more. The only ones not on the string are those too far away to matter.
Vermont, for example, is a small New England state with none of the usual big money interests. And they have a long history of being fiercely independent in how they vote, so they send people like Bernie Sanders to Washington and he can say anything he wants and get away with it. Same for Ron Paul, I suppose, although I don't know that much about his district. But people like them are exceptions to the rule.
At a moment like this when NO ONE seems to trust ANY of the elected officials, and slogans like "throw the bums out" and "you can't trust any of them" start flying. I'm not picking on you personally, but phrases like "the political class" also enter the vocabulary. NOW is the moment to start looking around at the non-elected special interests with the sugar. Who are they? Whom did they pay? How much? Which of them stands to gain or lose by the proposed legislation? Etc.
In this case, the two biggest interest groups are of divided opinion. PhRMA and the insurance people are absolutely salivating over the thought that forty million new customers are about to be added to the market for both of them. But they tremble at the thought that (1) Medicare might start trying to negotiate better drug prices (which it cannot do at the moment) and (2) something called a "public option" might compete with private insurance for a piece of this new business.
Rather than risk either of these scenarios rocking the boat, both are willing to kill the process entirely, defending the status quo, rather than risk losing what is at the moment a very profitable arrangement. Never mind that arrangement means continuing to siphon tax dollars into their respective bottom lines. Why should anyone in the private sector care where the money comes from as long as it keeps coming?
Oh Yes! And because of this I blame the people (Me Included) as well for knowing how this works and continuing to put up with it election after election.
ReplyDeleteI believe it is the great flaw of having only a two-party system. They have such a stranglehold on the system that no one else, other than those running for office within the two-party system has a chance at being elected.
I no longer vote with either of these parties. The people could break the system as it is,but I don't believe this is likely to happen. There are to many factions wanting to many different things.
The only keystone I know of to end the corruption is to kill the fiction of corporate personhood, so that industries are not entitled to "free speech" (it's commercial speech) or the ability to fund politicians. Politicians can't or won't end that, and our only recourse outside of elections is amending state constitutions. "For all purposes under the laws of the state of _____, a person shall be defined as a natural person."
ReplyDeleteI've always wondered how money equals speech. I know it has to do with the law, but in the words of Mr. Bumble "If the law supposes that, then the law is a ass."
ReplyDeleteDefining marriage in gender terms may be controversial but defining speech in terms of human beings shouldn't be hard to grasp.