The nation has seen some incredibly dysfunctional politics
on the left and the right over the last two months. First there was the Republican shutdown and
now we have a mess with the rollout of Obamacare. Today’s RealClearPolitics
website offers articles authored by William Saletan and Todd Purdum that
discuss how President Obama can still win the Obamacare debate. The idea is that because of the Republicans
counter intelligent effort to shutdown the Government has put the Democrats in
a better position to win the 2014 mid-term elections. Well, let’s take a look at that.
First, let’s look at the Shutdown. If you are a Democrat you should herald this
as one of the most, oh, I can’t quite find a good term that captures the
essence of that political action. Words
like bonehead, moronic, insane come to mind and they are just inadequate. The Shutdown was never a good idea for three
reasons. First, it was never possible
for the Shutdown to achieve its aims of dismantling Obamacare. Since the first definition of politics is
that it is the art of the possible, why engage in the impossible? Second, we live in a democracy, and if you
are a minority in a democracy, you have to compromise. To tell your constituents that you don’t have
to compromise to achieve your ends is, well, like leading lambs to
slaughter. All during the Shutdown I was
reflecting on Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Charge
of the Light Brigade, a poem about 600 soldiers who loyally gave up their
lives in battle on the orders of misinformed superiors who foolishly did not
know the battlefield. The far right
Republican leadership misspent the trust of their constituents and lost
political capital in the process. Finally,
the Shutdown violated some of the most basic rules we learned in kindergarten
about how to live in a sandbox. Americans
don’t like bullies in their sandbox. Here
was Ted Cruz acting like a bully trying to take over the sandbox, and Harry
Reid threw him out: the duly elected bigger bully of the sandbox. The great American center that believes in
fair play doesn't appreciate these types of spectacles. So, one would think that Democrats would be
masters of the universe right about now due to the Republican implosion. Yet, they are not.
The Obamacare rollout fiasco has hurt Democrats, and it is
likely that it will hurt them more and more all the way up to the 2014
elections. Where the Shutdown was a
one-time thing, Obamacare will bring healthcare issue after healthcare issue
into our political debate for the next year.
It will be a drip-drip-drip that
politicians need to avoid in order to look competent and win re-election. The real issue will not be the botched
programming of a governmental website.
That will get fixed, eventually.
It will get fixed late, but it will get fixed. Rather, the issue will be how Obamacare
violates another basic tenet of American culture.
Within the American psyche is a fundamental belief that we
can always have more. The basic quote
attributed to Horace Greely from the 1800’s “go west young man!” signifies that
we, both individually and as a people, can go out and make more of ourselves
for ourselves. We can have more land or
wealth, or whatever by going out and making more of ourselves to get it. The idea that any resource is finite is
against this cultural experience.
I am old enough to remember the theme of the Kennedy
administration, which charged us to explore “New Frontiers.” And in accordance with that direction,
President Kennedy challenged this nation to expand upward and put a man on the
moon, a challenge that was fulfilled after his passing. That was the last great expansionary effort
by an American President. After that
came the Vietnam War, terrorism, and the Great Recession and the pathetic
recovery following it. Nationally, it now
seems that we cannot expand and grow our way out of problems. Rather, we have to settle and cope with
them.
Obamacare is a marker in our cultural experience. It is a formal program that officially recognizes
that a critical resource is finite and that some people have too much of it and
others have too little. Whereas our tax
policies reallocate a growing resource, namely our income, Obamacare
reallocates a finite resource, which is our healthcare. As an impact of this reallocation, some
people who are very sick will get seriously hurt when they loose their
healthcare.
In the last week there have been many stories about
Americans who rely on their current health insurance to stay alive. They usually have cancer and are affiliated
with a PPO or other such health provider association. Many of these PPO’s are based around a
university medical center that is normally too expensive to be sponsored by any
insurance plan on the new exchanges.
These PPOs and other similar plans are being cancelled because they do
not meet the new criteria laid down by Obamacare. I saw a story about a 52-year-old cancer
survivor who needs maintenance treatments from a university hospital. Her existing PPO plan is being cancelled and
she cannot afford a new plan from the exchange.
Not only is the premium higher, but also the $12,000 deductible makes it
impossible for her to afford the new plan.
Providing healthcare for her family and herself is now the major
challenge in her life as she tries to figure out how to manage her life into a future
that is suddenly very threatening.
From a social programming standpoint, one can say that the
healthcare of the cancer survivor is being reallocated to the poor who are now
being admitted into Medicaid under the new law.
From an economic perspective, one can discuss the pools of the young
insured healthy people paying for sick older people. However these analyses breakdown because each
of these people who have been critically hurt by the new law now have a
face. Each has a very personal story.
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