DATE: 23 May 2009
TO: My Political E-Mail List
SUBJECT: Re: Krugman: Blue Double Cross [An Op-Ed Piece in the New York Times]
Bruce (and other progressive friends),
Thanks for this article, which — in classic Krugman style — lays it on the line. It was remarkable to me that in the months running up to the election the people on the Right I spoke with had one thing consistently on their mind (another example of the lockstep political messaging from the Right): They didn’t speak with passion about the election — it was apparently obvious even to them that Bush was too much of an albatross around any GOP nominee’s neck — but they did against health care reform, which they even more than I knew was going to be the big issue (It is the Number One issue in labor/management disagreements; and has been noted elsewhere, as by the president, rising health care costs are driving much of the increase in costs of entitlement programs, read Medicare and Medicaid, which are not as cataclysmic and [sic] the Right insists, in their continuing effort to dismantle those and other social programs, but which do demand addressing).
What is most remarkable to me, though, is not the lockstep messaging but the opposition to something that affects everyone, across the political spectrum: the failure of our existing health “care” system to deliver adequate care to millions, including those going bankrupt from medical expenses (Most personal bankruptcies are due to medical expenses, and in most of those cases the person going bankrupt had health insurance when he or she first got sick: Get sick, lose job, go broke — everyone I’ve talked to acknowledges that as a very real, very big problem).
In a sense, we are in a political battle like the military battle we’re in against Al Qaeda: Unlike in the Cold War, when our adversary was controlled, as we were, by Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), when we’re up against those opposing the repair of our health care system or we’re fighting suicide bombers we’re dealing with those who are basically willing to take themselves down just as long as they take us down with them.
Just as we cannot allow the Taliban and Al Qaeda to get their hands on the growing Pakistani nuclear arsenal — I doubt they would really be dissuaded from using such powerful weapons by our threats to send them to all those virgins “awaiting them” in Paradise (Damn their blasphemous twisting of Islam’s basically humane teachings) — we cannot allow the Right, funded by the deep pockets of Big Pharma, Big Insurance, Big Etc., to continue propping up a system literally taking and otherwise destroying tens of millions of our lives (Not even Al Qaeda can do that).
As we approach Independence Day, we are reminded that America was founded in dedication to the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and there is no more fundamental right than the right to life (and I’m not getting into the particulars of the abortion issue now but rather the general principle vital to all of us who live and breathe) and there is no issue more important than allocating the resources we do have, as the richest nation on Earth and in history, to provide as good a care as we can to all those in need, financed as equitably as possible — I’m sure we can come up with a system not only as good as that working in every other industrial nation, as we’ve heard ad nauseum, but even better, in terms of quality, accessibility, and affordability of care and, again, equity in financing (Yes, I’m talking progressive taxation, not the regressive “value added” sales-type tax as used so much in Europe to finance health care).
The Obama Administration is about to begin its very public push for health care reform — beginning on the sixth of June (http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/hckickoff) — and ultimately, as always, the real power in this country lies not with big business or big government but with the public at large. That was the spirit that put our historic president in office (and I believe he will be historic not only because of his ancestry but also because of his leadership of the nation, with our backing, into much better years ahead). If we demand real reforms, then woe be unto those who oppose us. Change will, however, probably be at least somewhat incremental, if history is any guide; but change can be inevitable — if and only if we the people demand it.
Change health care for the better? Yes we can!
Doug
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