Last night I attended what was supposed to be a constituent meeting with Barney Frank at the Dartmouth Council on Aging. Instead, it was like stepping into a Harry Potter novel where the forces of darkness shrieked accusations that national health care would murder grandma, flashed pictures of the President photoshopped to look like Hitler, and proved only that they had no respect for, or intention of conducting, a civil dialog. It further amazed me that the local Republican Party, which orchestrated much of the circus on display last night, was scarcely distinguishable from the Larouchists, Birthers, conspiracy theorists, and the un-medicated in attendance. For all their noise, the Republicans are a party in trouble.
But the fact still remains: Americans actually want national health care and, despite some Blue Dog back-stepping on the public option, Americans like that idea as well.
According to a June survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 53% of Americans strongly support a public option in health care, and another 30% moderately support the idea. And why not? Besides education, many voters feel that their tax money should actually do something for them personally, rather than evaporate in military expenditures and corporate bailouts.
Despite all the fear-mongering, the United States is the only Western nation to have no comprehensive and universal national health care. All of Western Europe, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Israel – virtually every modern industrial nation we compete with – provides this option for its citizens. The sky has not fallen in any these countries, and many of them are actually doing better than we are economically.
The proposed health plan simply ensures that everyone in the U.S. is covered. Yes, there is never a major change that does not have unintended consequences, and adding primary care for 50 million more Americans will undoubtedly expose weaknesses in our health care infrastructure, require additional physicians and health care workers, necessitate building more walk-in clinics, foster innovations in delivery of services, and stimulate the development of more sophisticated systems for storing medical records. The self-employed could actually develop businesses secure in the knowledge they had a safety net. With a system in place, over time and with more confidence, the burden of health care could shift off employers to the public sphere, making U.S. corporations more competitive with foreign companies who do not have this burden.
I’m afraid that Fox News and CNN got their amusing sound bytes from the mobocracy last night, but a rational consideration of the benefits – and risks – of expanding coverage for all Americans will have to occur off-camera.
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