Opposing Your Own Interests.

Why are so many people fighting and voting against their own interests? Why do so many of those people listen to the right wing shills of the special interests? Particularly when the most outspoken shills are so paranoid and unbalanced. Here you have Glen Beck. This man thinks the walls of public buildings offer clues of a conspiracy to ruin the country. Of course we all know that anyone participating in such a nefarious plot would want to put coded messages on the walls of public buildings so that someone like Glen Beck can uncover the plot and thwart it. Mr. Beck is obviously not playing with a full deck. But do not worry, loose knobs Dobbs will tell you why companies trying to sell soap should continue to sponsor Mr. Beck’s absurd and often racial rants. Although Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the other right wing extremists draw a large audience, that audience actually comprises a rather small percentage of the population. I am willing concede that most of the people working against their own economic interests probably do not listen to them. But the outrageous rants of extremists like Mr. Beck and Mr. Limbaugh are still instructive because those men clearly state what the, so called, conservatives are actually thinking. That is why the other special interest shills defend those extremists. It is also why the seemingly reasonable shills use less provocative language to echo the thoughts the extremists express so bluntly.

The first word out of the mouths of those who oppose any progressive change is always welfare. Welfare was a part of President Johnson’s great society, and conservatives see it as a product of the turbulent civil rights movement. In other words, they see it as a racial issue! Never mind the fact that a public option will provide the competition needed to keep down the cost of everyone’s health coverage regardless of whether they choose to keep their private health insurance or go with the public option; neoconservatives will still oppose the option. They think that getting gouged by private companies is just a part of the free market system. What bothers them is that the public option will insure people who do not presently have insurance. Neoconservatives do not think about the fact that most of the people who choose the public option will be paying premiums to support it. Nor do they think about the fact that the free emergency room visits by the uninsured probably cost more than the public option would. The primary fear of any neoconservative is that some of his or her hard earned dollars will be used to provide medical treatment to people of a different race! The insurance industry shills, such as Republicans and blue dog Democrats, are well aware of this attitude. That is why they call something like the public insurance option a government run “social program.” Neoconservatives think all “social programs” are designed to provide for the poor. The shills do not have to define the poor in racial terms because neoconservatives automatically think of welfare. In other words, one of the primary objections to the public option is racially motivated, and the insurance company shills are exploiting that racism. That is why they also insist that the public option will be available to illegal immigrants regardless of the fact that the proposed legislation specifically excludes illegal immigrants.

The other motive for opposing the public insurance option is blind ideology. Those ideologues say that it is capitalism and the free enterprise system that made us the most prosperous nation in the history of the world. I agree with them for the most part, but it was the trust busters and the reasonable regulations passed during Franklin Roosevelt’s administration that kept our free market system from degenerating into social Darwinism. The breaking up of the trusts and the New Deal regulations helped to stabilize the markets and provided a level playing field that allowed fair competition. The ideologues, however, refuse to acknowledge that fact. They continue to oppose any meaningful regulations even though it was the repeal of some of those regulations and the failure to enforce the ones still in place that permitted AIG to become too large to fail and permitted the risky behavior that resulted in the economic meltdown we experienced just last year. The reason why I am addressing this extreme free market view is because the opponents of the public insurance option say that it is more than just the health care proposals that have them so upset. They also object to the government’s regulation of businesses and the entire stimulus program. They erroneously insist that the bailouts and other measures are detrimental in spite of the fact that the vast majority of economists say that it was only the swift actions of the Bush administration and President Obama that kept the economy from totally collapsing. The economists obviously learned something from the Great Depression. I am afraid I cannot say the same thing about the free enterprise ideologues.

It is this stubborn refusal of the ideologues to acknowledge any facts that might contradict their assumptions that makes it so difficult for them to realize that they are now working against their own economic interests. You would have to be living on another planet in order to deny that the runaway cost of health insurance is a serious problem. It increased by 30% during the period of 2001 through 2005 while income only rose by a mere 3% during that time. The cost of health insurance rose by another 15.9% just last year. Furthermore, nearly 50% of the bankruptcies declared are now due to medical expenses. Yet the people opposing the stimulus package and the public insurance option still insist that there is nothing wrong with our health care system. I am assuming that most of them have health insurance that is provided by their employers. In which case, the people opposing health care reform are simply not bright enough to realize that they are only a layoff away from being uninsured and only one or two price increases away from their employer canceling the coverage they presently have. Even more perplexing is the fact that everyone knows the insurance companies use flimsy excuses like preexisting conditions in order to deny coverage for any costly or prolonged treatment regardless of whether those preexisting conditions have any relationship to the malady requiring treatment. The people opposing medical reform are aware of the many denials of claims and coverage; yet they are still naive enough to think it will not happen to them. The bottom line is that they refuse to look beyond what they are presently experiencing.

How do we get people to look beyond what they are presently experiencing? How do we tell them they are working against their own interests when they are so busy shouting “Socialism” that they cannot hear us? Forget about the racists and the ideologues whose views are so extreme that they would even dismantle Social Security and Medicare. Those racists and those extremists are beyond hope. Getting them to listen to facts or reason is impossible. You would stand a better chance of teaching your dog how to do calculus. Fortunately, a large number of the staunchest free enterprise proponents would still preserve Social Security and Medicare, and they are the ones we must reach. We must find a way to break through the emotional bearers they have erected long enough to get them to listen to reason. I think they will listen to arguments about the need for regulations forbidding insurance companies from using flimsy excuses such as preexisting conditions in order to deny coverage. I think they will also be open to the argument that the competition they so highly prize is the only thing that can stabilize or reduce the price of medical coverage. Clearly, the private insurance companies are not providing that competition. If they were, the price of medical coverage would have stabilized or decreased a long time ago. This means that we must introduce a new factor to provide the needed competition. The surest way to do that is with a public insurance option, which is no more socialistic than Social Security or Medicare.

The argument that a public option will drive the private carriers out of the health insurance market is inconsistent on its face. We are not talking about a single payer system that will eliminate the coverage offered by private companies. People who want to keep their present insurance rather than buying the public coverage will be perfectly free to do so. If the private insurance companies offer a better benefits package than the public insurance offers, I am sure many people will buy the policies offered by the private companies. They will do this even if the premiums are a bit higher than the ones charged by the government. Furthermore, the private carriers will probably find a market for coverage that supplements the public insurance. It is a win, win situation. The only reason why the insurance companies and their shills oppose the public option is because the insurance companies will have to do something they have not been doing. They will actually have to compete! I believe that competition is the American way regardless of what we have to do to bring it about.

To you super patriots out there I say: The true patriots are not the ones waving the flags and screaming America is great while ignoring the very real challenges we face. True patriots dedicate themselves to meeting and overcoming those challenges. It is not the public option and other stimulus programs that are un-American; rather it is the refusal to support or come up with any reasonable solutions. Make no mistake about it, the health care crises is threatening to overwhelm us. The soaring cost of medical insurance greatly decreases the goods and services the average American family can purchase. By reducing the cost of health care coverage the public insurance option will make American families healthier and more prosperous. This, in turn, will help to stimulate our sluggish economy. Doing nothing is not acceptable. The best medical care in the world does not do you any good if you cannot afford it. This is a problem we know how to solve, and we must solve it. We did not become a great nation by ignoring reality.

Campaign For The Public Option!

All right, this blog has become political. I cannot help it. We are in a hell of a mess. It is about jobs and health care. The greatest obstacles to correcting our economy are the knee jerk reactions, and the outrageous exploitation of those reactions by a party that is now intellectually and morally bankrupt. Their policies have failed, and they simply cannot make the adjustments necessary to deal with the crises. They had the same problem during the Great Depression. People are understandably afraid and angry. But rather than dealing with the real problems the Republicans are exploiting the fears and the anger. They who say the leaders of our present government are behaving like Nazis are indulging in what psychologists call projection. The Nazis blamed all of Germany’s problems on the Jews, the Gypsies, and every other ethnic or religious minority. They also blamed the democratic government set up by the treaty of Versailles, and they talked about restoring the Germany they knew. We all know where that led. Do not overreact to what I am saying here. I am not accusing the Republicans of being Nazis; nor am I suggesting that they would ever set up a fascist state. What I am saying is that they are encouraging such vilifications. They are doing this to avoid the real issues, and their behavior is both hypocritical and dangerous!

This is where the knee jerk reactions kick in. “Socialism” is a word the Republicans frequently use to trigger such responses. Socialism is seen as being the opposite of capitalism. Since capitalism is good socialism must be evil. Many will even mistakenly say that there is no difference between socialism and communism. What those people are looking at are the extremes. They are thinking of socialism as an all or nothing proposition, and they are portraying every regulation and government program as evil socialism. When the government broke up the trusts and monopolies that had a stranglehold on our economy John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan and others screamed “Socialism!” When Franklin Roosevelt took office the opponents of his New Deal did not confine themselves to calling the work programs and Social Security socialism; they also called the regulation of the stock market and the banks socialism. When some of those bank and stock market regulations were repealed and others were no longer enforced we wound up with the AIG debacle, banks failing, brokerage firms failing, and companies that depended on credit failing. All of which created the worst economic situation since the Great Depression. Another example of the failure of deregulation can be found in California. When that state deregulated the electrical utilities the result was Enron and extreme hardships for the citizens of that state. What this tells us is that there is a reason for the regulations. They are not there because the government has this great desire to take over everything. They are there to prevent the abuses and problems that have become all too apparent.

Mr. Obama’s health care reforms call for some strict regulation of the health insurance industry. I agree that those regulations are needed, but they are not enough. We can never be sure that those regulations will not be repealed or that another George W. Bush will simply fail to enforce them. Furthermore, what is being proposed does not include any caps on the premiums the insurance companies can charge their customers. This is why we need a strong public insurance option. We have to provide a competing system that will keep the insurance companies from gouging us. This Republican nonsense about creating competition by allowing consumers to shop for insurance in other states is utterly ridiculous. The insurance companies will do the same thing large corporations did when they incorporated in New Jersey; they will all migrate to the state with the fewest regulations and consumer protections. The Republicans can scream “socialism” until they are blue in the face, but the word has lost much of its sting. The majority of Americans realize we must have reasonable regulations and that programs such as Social Security and Medicare are desirable even if they are socialistic. Perhaps that is why the Republicans are pandering to the nut cases who attend tea parties and disrupt community meetings. Those nut cases are the ones that are the most gullible.

Unfortunately, it is not just the nut cases we have to deal with. There is a sizeable minority that is not convinced that we need a public option. That minority actually comprises a majority in the states of blue dog senators. Unlike the nut cases, this minority is comprised of honest conservatives who can be convinced. To do so we need to get the young people who supported Obama to actively campaign for it. We need them to help sell the public option and to write their senators. To get those young, healthy people to take action means that we have to show them why the health care issues have an immediate impact on them. They need to know that the reforms are an important part of the economic program. This comes down to jobs. People with jobs pay taxes and buy things. The reason why John F. Kennedy’s tax breaks for the middle class did not increase the deficit as his critics had predicted is because the people receiving those tax breaks used the additional money to buy more goods and services. This increased demand. Businesses responded to the increased demand by increasing production. This resulted in the creation of more jobs. The increase in the number of people who were employed then increased the tax revenues and the demand for goods and services. This in turn added even more jobs. If the average person can save a significant amount of money on their health insurance premiums because of the public option, it will increase the amount of goods and services they can purchase. This will increase the demand for goods and services and add the jobs those young people need in order to enter the job market. In other words, the young people do not have to wait until they need health care to benefit from the reform.

The public option is a win, win proposition. Believe me, the insurance companies will not go broke. They will still have all those people who keep their present coverage, and they might add many people who buy coverage to supplement their public insurance policies. Best of all everyone will finally be able to pay for the medical treatments they need.

To All U.S. Senators:

I do not need to tell you our health care system is broken. I do not need to tell you about the soaring medical costs, the denial of insurance coverage at the very time people need that coverage the most, or the obscene profits being made by the insurance companies and the drug industry. You already know those things. For fifty years we Democrats have been trying to reform the system to provide affordable health care. Important interim steps have been taken in spite of the opposition of powerful special interests who fought to defend an outrageously profitable status quo. I applaud the Congresspersons and the Senators who supported that legislation. But interim steps are half measures, and half measures are not acceptable when so many people are losing their health care coverage. We need the public insurance option now! Waiting will only mean more suffering, and it will not improve the odds of getting the public option. Regardless of how long we wait the companies that are raking in the profits from our broken health care system will fiercely oppose any meaningful change. Those companies and their allies will still tell the big lies, and they will still whip up the fears of the gullible. Furthermore, they will still use their considerable resources to reward the Senators who oppose the public option and to punish the Senators who support that option.

Today the Democratic Party has a large enough majority in the Senate to pass a bill that contains the public option. You Democrats who are dragging your feet on this issue should hang your heads in shame, and so should you Republicans. You hold the health of millions of Americans in your hands. The vast majority of your fellow citizens are just one catastrophic illness away from bankruptcy. What you do now will be judged by them and by future generations. Do not oppose the one measure that will provide them with affordable heath care!

This is Profiles In Courage time. This is the time to spend whatever political capital it takes. This is the time to thwart the lies with the truth, to address the fears with calm reason, and to defy the threats with determined action. They who serve long do not always serve well. If you do not stand up and do what is right, your longevity in office means nothing. You do not want to be on the wrong side of history regarding this issue. You do not want people to say that you acted like a tool of the special interests or that you cowered behind a locked door when opportunity knocked. This is the most important domestic issue of our times. Stand up to the lies and the threats. Become one of the heroes supporting the public option. A mere five or six years from now people will thank God that you had the courage and the wisdom to do what we so desperately need done!

P.S. I encourage anyone who is so inclined to print out a copy of this letter and send it to your Senators.