The Loss of a Personal Hero

My intention for today's post was to write about the new CIA documents that were released on Monday and President Obama's recent appointment of a special prosecutor. This morning I realized that discussion would have to wait for another time. Instead I would like to join much of the country in making a comment about a hero of mine. Yesterday, in the late hours, he finally lost his battle with brain cancer.

Let me start by saying that there are many different kinds of heroes. Some of them have fought in war valiantly and selflessly, enduring horrors unimaginable to the rest of us. Some have made a career out of saving people, risking or losing their lives in the process of giving someone else the gift of life. Others have been flung into heroic acts on the spur of the moment such as those courageous passengers who overcame terrorists and brought down United Airlines flight 93 on that awful day in 2001. Then there are those unsung heroes who mentor our kids on a daily basis for little pay and frequently little gratitude. There is no doubt that these people can be called great American heroes.

Senator Ted Kennedy was none of these. He is certainly not unsung. We know a great deal about him. There was even a time in his life where he was considered an anti-hero of a sort. Living in the shadow of his assassinated brothers who had fought for civil rights, he was known for leaving the scene of a fatal accident that resulted in a woman's drowning. This almost cost him his career. Fortunately, for all of us, Kennedy moved past this and spent the next decades transforming into a different kind of hero.

During his nine terms as a U.S. Senator, Kennedy sponsored over 2,500 bills. Here are just a few of these: The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, The National Cancer Act of 1971, The Voting Rights Amendment Act of 1982, The Employment Opportunities for Disabled Americans Act of 1986, The National Military Childcare Act of 1989, The Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, The Family Opportunity Act of 2006. The list of progressive social reforms for which he is responsible for seems endless.

Although he worked throughout his career on a wide variety of issues, Senator Kennedy may be best known for his tireless efforts at accomplishing that task that we have been so passionate about in recent weeks. He served as chairman of the Senate's Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. He looked upon health care as a "fundamental right" of every American, and he was on a mission to enact healthcare reform until the day he died. Some say that it will be much more difficult to achieve comprehensive reform without his guidance, and I think, sadly, that there is much truth in this.

Perhaps the thing that made Senator Kennedy the most heroic is that he accomplished something that no one else in congress has really managed with such great success. He was often viewed as one of the most, if not the most, liberal person in the Senate. His views sometimes left him in the minority. He was one of only 23 senators who voted against the Iraq War Resolution. And yet, not only was he greatly respected and admired by his most conservative colleagues, he actually managed to compromise with them on countless key pieces of legislation without sacrificing his commitment to his ideals. One can guess, but I don't think anyone will ever really understand how he did this.

To say that Ted Kennedy was heroic is not to say that he was perfect. No hero ever is. He made mistakes and spent some of his life combatting the kind of personal problems to which many of us can relate. There wasn't anything very dramatic about his heroism either, but, for me, Senator Kennedy was the voice of reason in a world that often seemed insane. What he said always made sense. He never resorted to the emotional tactics of persuasion through distortion and lies that we so frequently see in politics. He is a hero because he understood what people needed, and he spent his life giving it to them through his legislation. The United States is a better place because of him, and we have experienced a great loss.

Image Courtesy of chrisseddon.com

No More Compromise! Keep Your Grubby Hands Off My Public Option!

Well, ladies and gents, we may have just lost our best chance we have ever had for healthcare reform. Over this past weekend a combination of statements made from members of the Obama Administration suggested that it is backing away from its push for a public insurance option. President Obama said that the public option is not the "entirety or healthcare reform." Robert Gibbs, a white house spokesperson, commented that the president could be satisfied with a bill that did not include the public option. In an interview Health and Human Service Secretary Kathleen Sebelius stated that the public option is not essential. While none of these officials ever said that they were giving up public health insurance, their statements seemed odd for people who have been putting a public option at the forefront of this debate since it began. Adding to the uncertainty about the matter was Senate Finance Committee member Kent Conrad of North Dakota who said that a bill with a public option would never make its way through both houses of Congress.

The thought that the White House could even be considering dropping the one thing that will make any real difference for healthcare reform is a deeply disappointing one. I doubt that the bill would even be worth passing without the public option. While it might serve to reform some of the corrupt practices that private insurers use, we would not get the sweeping changes in our infrastructure that we so desperately need. I am in complete agreement with what Howard Dean said on the "Today Show" on Monday. Other parts of the bill might be about enacting "insurance reform." This could lower costs and improve terms for some people who are already insured. However, real healthcare reform will not be likely to happen without the public option because it is the only way to expand coverage to everyone.

As I stated in a previous post, public healthcare clearly makes the most sense. Statistics show that Canadian and European single-payer systems are cheaper, more efficient, and result in higher quality healthcare than the system we now have. They are not perfect. People in these countries have a complaint from time to time, but by and large, they are satisfied with their healthcare. They have far fewer worries because they know they are guaranteed basic care. These are simple facts. What I find so frustrating is that in the United States so many of our decisions are not based on reason and pragmatism. Pragmatism means looking at what has worked someplace else and trying it for ourselves.

So what is keeping us from using logic and common sense to make these important healthcare decisions? These two things: fear and profit.

The greatest fear is of the great, evil socialist machine. Some how any government involvement in our daily lives is going to take us on the path toward totalitarianism. If you think about this in any kind of rational way, this is the worst of slippery slopes. All my life I have lived in a country with public schools, a public post office, public emergency systems, medicare, and social security. I have yet to see a representative from the government wearing a swastika and beating down anyone's door. That isn't to say that we haven't witnessed some things that are reminiscent of this type of behavior. Let's see. I don't know...How about our government's invasion of a foreign country for reasons that were completely fabricated? How about the torturing war prisoners in a complete violation of the Geneva Convention? How about the government spying on it's own citizens? These things do not have the mark of totalitarianism, but try saving lives by giving everyone more affordable health care and people are suddenly terrified of becoming victims of the next Third Reich?

The other fear I hear time and again is the fear of being taxed. We are already so burdened with taxes, and the government wants us to pay more? How is it going to pay for this high priced healthcare option? The Administration can't explain this. The truth is that President Obama has explained this over and over again. The tax revenue will come from those making over $250 thousand dollars per year. Remember them? That's right. They are the ones who have been getting all the tax breaks for the last eight years or so. The rest will be paid for through streamlining and by eliminating inefficiency and waste. It couldn't be that simple, could it? How do we know when we haven't ever tried it? Even if the average person's taxes were expanded, healthcare would likely still end up being cheaper than it is under the current system.

Now we come to what is, perhaps, the most motivating fear of all. The private insurance companies are terrified of losing their precious profits. Who wouldn't feel sorry for those poor little corporations that won't be able to compete with such a brutal, totalitarian government? Numerous commentators have predicted that a public option will result in a death spiral for the private insurers. Well, in the first place I don't know if this would be such a bad thing. I am someone who has had the experience of having a very large medical expense, and who spent years trying to iron it out while insurance companies tried to screw me over. Secondly, this isn't necessarily the truth at all. Insurance companies could compete easily if they made the necessary adjustments in cost and services. If they are not willing to do so, then I say the same thing they would say to their competitors. C'est la vie. Survival of the fittest. Finally, we have recently seen what corporate greediness did to the world's economy. Why would we want to leave decisions that could determine whether we live or die solely in the hands of those who want to make a buck off of us?

There is another option that the Senate Finance committee has been kicking around in order to make the bill more palatable to the House. This is the idea of government subsidized co-ops. Using government seed money, consumers get together and produce their own companies. Because they are non-profit, this takes out the big, fat CEO paycheck as the primary motivation. This sounds like a great compromise, right? This has been tried before on a limited basis, so it does give us some real facts to look at unlike the emotional arguments the people have been screaming about in the recent town hall debates. Well, here is the problem. A 2000 study conducted by the U.S. General Accounting Office has already evaluated the effectiveness of such programs. The study found that the co-ops were not able to substantially lower costs. Thus far there is no evidence to indicate that expanding co-ops would make any real change in the current health insurance market. So this is not really a viable compromise. Besides, as one citizen so succinctly put it on NPR this week, we have already compromised. Many of us would prefer a fully government-funded, single-payer healthcare system. Having a public option that competes as one among many is already a compromise.

Linda Douglass, a different White House aide recently said that Obama still very much favors a public option. I hope this is true, or real healthcare reform will die and the president will be complicit in its death even if spineless Democrats in the House accept some kind of bill without the public option.

I am one angry liberal, and I know I am not alone. We are as pissed off as Howard Beale. (If you are too young to remember Network, look it up.) We could try screaming out of the window, but I don't know that it would accomplish anything. Then again....maybe it would. Maybe we should disrupt town hall meetings and scream ourselves hoarse. Isn't that the tactic being used by the squeaky wheels who object to the public option?

It would still make a lot more sense to me if such decision could be based on proven results, statistics, and sound reasoning instead of the unsubstantiated fears of the uninformed.