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 When some of those bank and stock market regulations were repealed and others were no longer enforced we wound up with the AIG debacle, banks failing, brokerage firms failing, and companies that depended on credit failing.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.