The man wasn’t a saint; he was a Kennedy, after all, and a politician. Still, Senator Kennedy was an amazing force of nature in his legislative life, and a man who actually had the fortitude to stick to his guns on any issue that was important to him. In the face of resistance and anger from many of his colleagues in Washington – often including those in his own party – Kennedy never wavered when he believed that he was doing the right thing. And as the reviews of his career as a lawmaker have been reminding us over the past 36 hours, he was doing the right thing more often than not. A man born to privilege, without any need to concern himself with those of a lower economic station, became the champion of the poor, the victimized, the desperate. He genuinely wanted to help people with the work he did as a member of Congress, and that is not something that can be said with a straight face or a clear conscience about almost any other politician in our nation today.
In today’s New York Times, there are many articles, reports and rememberances regarding Senator Kennedy. As I read through the paper this morning, one sentence jumped out at me from all the newsprint. In an editorial about Kennedy, the Times wrote that the senator always held fast to the conviction “that politics be grasped and administered throught the prism of human needs”. This struck me like a lightning bolt from the blue. It is a crystal clear reminder of what the American government should be about, and a reminder of how far those in power have strayed from that noble ideal.
In the current debate about health care reform, Kennedy’s passion and main focus for decades, we have seen our elected officials at their worst. We have witnessed lies, distortions and scare tactics on one side, developed and propagated for no other reason than to mislead the public and block any reasonable discussion of the facts. On the other side, we have seen proponents of reform failing to respond strongly or quickly enough, and we have seen many taking the path of least resistance, giving up on important points of reform (like the public option) in order to move things along more smoothly and just get something – ANYTHING – passed. In all of this, we have been let down in a huge way by those who have been sent to Washington to do their best on our behalf.
What about “the prism of human needs”? Many in Washington (and in the voting public) have been brainwashed into believing that the fundamental obligation of our government should be to protect capitalism. Nothing could be further from the truth, or from the intentions of this country’s founding fathers. This was always intended to be a nation of betters – better freedoms, better opportunities, better ways of life. Our elected officials have a duty to make sure that these things are available to every American citizen. Why should we stand back and accept the nonsense that is currently being spouted by those politicians whose only concern is to protect the market? Businesses should not be the priority here – people should. There is a gaping hole and a staggering inequity within our current health care system, and any politician who refuses to address this in a meaningful way, out of concern for the health of the free market, doesn’t deserve to represent the citizens of this nation.
Let there be no doubt, no distortion, about this fundamental truth: the American government DOES NOT exist for the purpose of protecting capitalism. It must allow it, and it must provide space for it to flourish, but it must not aid and abet capitalism at the expense of the struggling among us. It must not be so beholden to industry that it fails to provide for those citizens who cannot find the help they need within the current system. It must not favor business out of a sense of obligation to the biggest donors, the loudest lobbyists, or the most powerful political action groups.
This reform movement has been framed by many opponents as a choice between a complete government takeover of the health care industry and a healthy free market. This rhetoric serves as a powerful tool for influencing peoples’ opinions, but it is not grounded in reality. What this reform bil is actually about is a choice between the rights of citizens and the rights of companies. The main objection that the anti-reform people have is that a public option would make it more difficult for private insurance companies to thrive.
Let’s examine that concern for a moment: the insurance industry, which has prospered for decades by offering as little coverage or compensation as legally possible to millions of Americans who are in need, might not be able to make the kind of money it’s used to making if the low-cost, universally-available government insurance program becomes a reality. This, according to the opponents of reform, is akin to socialism. If I may paraphrase Barney Frank, on what planet do these people spend most of their time?
If the town hall warriors and their leaders would give the bill an honest reading, they’d know that creating and providing a government-run health care program, ALONGSIDE private insurance, is the real goal here. Nobody wants to dismantle private insurers, or remove the option of private insurance from those who wish to pay for it. It is certainly true that a government-run program would make a huge dent in the bottom-line profits of private insurance companies. But why is this socialism? The government has no responsibility to ensure that businesses are always successful, or that companies may exist without competition from any other source. And as many calmer and more rational experts on the subject have pointed out, the US Postal Sevice never put FedEx or UPS out of business. There has been room for all of them to co-exist and grow. If the Postal Service didn’t exist, then FedEx and UPS executives would be a whole lot richer, without a doubt. But that does not mean that the government-run Postal Service is a socialist entity. It means that the commercial services like FedEx and UPS need to be more competitive in order to attract and keep customers, and there’s nothing wrong with making a company work for its money.
It is precisely this point that makes this such a clear-cut situation. The insurance and health care industries haven’t got any competition to force them into being more reasonable in their treatment of customers. They have been allowed to reign unchallenged, and it has made them all-powerful. Anyone who has ever experienced the frustration of arguing with a representative over their coverage, or who has been dropped or denied coverage based on a pre-existing condition, knows how dangerous that sort of unchecked power can be to the average American. Unchecked power over health or illness, over life or death, in the hands of corporations whose only motive is profit-based, should not be protected by the government and should not be considered the American ideal.
Opponents of reform also like to make dire predictions about how bad it would be for the government to control any part of the health care system. The scary talk about how medical services will be rationed by the government? Pure rubbish. Nothing in the bill calls for any form of rationing. Moreover, access to doctors, medications and procedures are most definitely rationed in America right at this moment – except that it is the insurance and medical industries who are doing the rationing. Only the fortunate ones receive coverage, and out of those who are covered, only a fraction receive top-notch, complete coverage. Is this OK with everyone who opposes reform? Is it really more acceptable to allow companies to pick and choose a handful of people to insure while the majority of Americans are left without protection, simply because it would be far too financially damaging to the company to actually insure sick people?
The bottom line is that without a public option, any reform bill will be inefficient to truly bring about the changes that are so desperately needed in our health care system. There may be honest arguments had about how to make it happen, and the details will require a lot of work to figure out. But blocking it from happening should not be the goal of any politician or citizen who wants the best for their country and their countrymen. America is one of the last prosperous industrialized nations in the world to consider or implement some form of government-run health insurance. That fact ought to be the scariest one of all to anyone who is paying attention.
And those politicians who are trying to stay in the good graces of the insurance and medical industries by distorting facts and lying to us ought to be ashamed of themselves. Particularly today, when the world is looking back and remembering the singular efforts of the late Senator Ted Kennedy. Most legislators could never come close to the type of tireless effort he put into his work over his lifetime. But maybe they could at least try. Maybe they could take just a moment to clear ther heads of the rabid partisanship and take a clearer look at what it is they were really elected to accomplish, and who they were really elected to represent. Senator Kennedy never forgot why he was in Washington, and maybe his passing will remind some of his colleagues to use “the prism of human needs” to gain a better perspective on how to best meet the challenges ahead.
