m***@use.net
2008-10-31 16:19:50 UTC
Want to Shut Conservatives Out of Power for Good? Implement Universal
Health Care
By Sara Robinson, Campaign for America's Future. Posted October 31,
2008.
Giving Americans universal access to health care will undermine some
of the deepest and most persistent myths of the conservative
worldview.
We've worked hard to build a progressive political juggernaut that
will, God willing and the creek don't rise, put us in control of both
Congress and the Executive Branch starting just a week from now.
But it's one thing to get power, and another thing to keep it.
Someone (OK, it was Rick Perlstein) recently asked a group of friends
to name the single most important policy step progressives could take
to solidify a long-term grip on the government -- the kind of extended
run we had from 1932 through to the Age of Reagan.
There were a lot of good answers. Ending privatization was, I thought,
the best answer of all. Reinvesting in education is important if we
want to ensure that the next generation will support and sustain our
work and values. (I like to joke that the reason they call it "liberal
education" is that the more of it you have, the more liberal you're
likely to be. It's not quite accurate, but it's true enough.) Ensuring
that people's interactions with government are useful and positive was
another: In a lot of states, one afternoon at the DMV is enough to
make the most ardent good-government partisan turn into Grover
Norquist. (Maybe we don't want to drag the whole government into the
bathtub to drown it, but that SOB at Window 11 would be a fine place
to start.)
But in the end, I settled on "provide universal health care --
preferably single-payer" as my final answer. I chose this not just
because health care is an important public good (though it is), but
because I'm convinced that this single step will do more to rapidly
and permanently undermine the conservative worldview than anything
else we could possibly do.
How Universal Care Changes Everything: The Canadian Example
I've seen this happen, at very close range. Over the course of nearly
five years living in Canada, I've been continually impressed by the
durable, far-reaching role universal health care plays in expressing
and reinforcing the entire country's political philosophy. It's
probably not overstating things to say that the health care system is
at the very core of the Canadian sense of national identity, right up
there with the Mounties and the Hudson's Bay Company and well above
the Queen. Every time my neighbors go to the doctor, the experience
reaffirms a set of cultural assumptions that, over time, have made and
kept the country unwaveringly progressive.
First, they're reminded that taking care of each other is a core
Canadian value -- a cherished piece of who they are. In the Harper
era, the conservatives up here have tried hard to sell American-style
rugged individualism and the belief that "you're on your own" (or
should be), beholden to no one, needing no one. Most Canadians reject
this as a peculiar form of insanity: Their interdependence is so
patently obvious to them that it's like denying the existence of
gravity. They're so proud of their health care system -- and what it
says about them as a nation -- that, when asked to name the greatest
Canadian in history a few years ago, they chose Tommy Douglas, the
provincial premier (governor) from Saskatchewan who was the father of
the first single-payer plan.
Second, they're reminded that their government does useful and
important things that add immensely to their quality of life, and thus
deserves their ongoing support. And their high hopes also lead to high
expectations. They not only expect a lot from their health care
system; they also expect that their police will be respectful and
law-abiding, their city parks will be well-tended; and their public
buildings will be beautiful. If it takes money to make that happen,
they'll spend it -- but those who've been trusted with it had better
be damned careful. Where Americans believe in "life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness," the Canadian Constitution calls for "peace,
order, and good government." And that set of aspirations is reinforced
every time they walk into a doctor's office and get the treatment they
need.
Third, they're reminded that certain rights are inalienable, and
certain levels of inequality are intolerable -- and that every
Canadian has an intrinsic and equal entitlement to shelter, food,
education, and health care. In the conservative era, America's
hypercompetitive society has been very quick to throw away people who
haven't made the cut in some way -- people without money, connections,
or education; people with disabilities that make them economically
less viable; people who come from the wrong racial or religious group
or the wrong part of the country. You only deserve what you,
personally, are capable of earning. If you're badly equipped to do
that, it's your own damned fault. If you can't afford health care, you
deserve to die. In no case is it the taxpayers' job to step in and
make it right.
That attitude is completely foreign up here. It's notoriously hard for
immigrants to find good jobs here, but even immigrants get health
care. There's a heroin problem in downtown Vancouver, but even junkies
get health care. You don't lose your insurance just because you got
sick, or got disabled, or had to quit your job; even the unemployed
get health care.
Nobody falls through the cracks, no matter what condition their
condition is in. Nobody is chained to a job they hate because they
can't afford to lose their health care. Nobody has to pass up the
chance to go back to school, or take a year abroad, or stay home with
their kids. Nobody hesitates before starting their own business,
either. The result is a healthier, more skilled, better-traveled, more
fulfilled, more entrepreneurial and ultimately more competitive
workforce.
A lot of Americans seem downright threatened by the idea that
everybody deserves the same level of health care, delivered by the
same doctors. It sounds like wild-eyed socialist ranting (all this
crazy talk of "rights"!). For Canadians, though, that right is such a
basic assumption that it's not even up for discussion. A civilized
country does not turn any of its citizens away from the table. And
that idea, once set, opens up a broader sense of what we owe each
other. Health care is the social contract in daily action. Ultimately,
having that contract reaffirmed so intimately and so often affects how
my neighbors do business, how they treat the environment, and how they
relate to the rest of the world. The effects of this affirmation
ripple out into everything Canada touches.
Which brings us to the last observation: sharing a common health care
system reminds Canadians that they're all in this together. From the
richest to the poorest, everyone arrives and dies in the same
hospitals, tended by the same doctors. It's in nobody's interest to
let that system fail. (Prairie folks -- Canada's version of
Midwesterners -- will tell you that the northern climate extremes also
encourage people to look out for each other. And that makes some
sense, too: denying help to neighbors and strangers during the winter
in places like Edmonton or Winnipeg can all too easily become an act
of negligent homicide. In extreme conditions, free access to good
hospitals becomes a critical piece of that caretaking.)
The upper classes occasionally try to introduce privatization options
in one province or another; but the citizens/patients, the government,
and the health care unions have usually brought tremendous pressure to
bear to limit or end these experiments. Everybody understands that if
the wealthy bail on the system, there won't be the political will to
keep the quality high. This conversation is ongoing -- and the very
fact that they keep having it also helps keep the symbolic importance
of the system front and center. Everybody understands very clearly
what's at stake.
How Guaranteed Health Care Could Change America
If we could get Americans thinking along similar lines, all manner of
impossible things will become possible. With one fell stroke,
providing universal access to health care will instantly undermine
some of the deepest and most persistent myths of the conservative
worldview. People will, very quickly, remember that we cannot function
as a democracy unless we're deeply invested in common wealth and a
common future -- that "you're on your own" is simply a conservative
lie that allows the rich to divide and conquer. We'll be startled at
first to see just how much a single well-run government program can
actually deliver -- and then, as our confidence grows, we'll start
expecting more of other government efforts, and become more willing to
experiment with other kinds of programs. It's quite likely we'll start
asking hard questions about programs that divert taxpayers' money away
from these essential goods, and re-prioritize our spending. Thrown
together into a shared health care system, we may even learn some
compassion for each other, and start to heal some of the deep social
and political rifts that have divided us for so long.
If it works in the U.S. half as well as it does in Canada, the
conservatives will be forced to give up on all those plans for that
big 2012 comeback they're so eagerly anticipating right now. With
roughly a third of the country either uninsured or under-insured; and
everybody else at risk of losing their coverage at a moment's notice,
the sheer relief at having that burden lifted from 300 million souls
is going to make the old conservative nostrums sound absolutely
insane. Anybody who suggests that there's something wrong with
universal care, or that it was better the old way, or that this is
that Pure Communist Evil they've been warning about since the days of
McCarthy, is going to be dismissed out of hand as an ideological
crank. Because only people who buy their Kool-Aid by the barrel could
even think about going back to the awful way things were in 2008.
It's all happened just this way before, of course. Social Security did
all these same things in its time. It shut up the economic royalists
and reintroduced Americans to the value of social contracts and a
belief in the common good. Americans accepted these ideas so
completely that liberals were able to seize control of the country's
political discourse, and dominate it for the next four decades. On
most issues, the conservatives had no choice but to follow their lead.
Unfortunately, though, all this happened over 70 years ago -- so far
in the past that most Americans can't even imagine what life was like
before we had a guaranteed retirement income. We take that much too
much for granted now. Creating a long-term 21st-century progressive
renaissance depends on our ability to bring these same lessons home to
a whole new generation in the most vivid and unforgettable way
possible. Guaranteed health care will do that. It has the potential to
become the catalyst for a new season of American progressivism that
could last another 40 years.
This notion is no secret to conservatives, who figured out 15 years
ago that universal health coverage could well become their undoing. In
the heat of the 1993 debate over the proposed Clinton health care
plan, Bill Kristol wrote a famous strategy memo in which he argued
that "passage of the Clinton health care plan in any form would be
disastrous. It would guarantee an unprecedented federal intrusion into
the American economy. Its success would signal the rebirth of
centralized welfare-state policy at the very moment that such policy
is being perceived as a failure in other areas."
Conservatives are already acutely aware that if we get health care
that works, they're going to be shut out of power and out of the
conversation for decades to come. They also know that, come January,
they may find themselves too weak to put up a fight.
Presidential candidate Barack Obama knows it, too, which is why he's
made universal health care a central part of his agenda. If he
succeeds, I think people are going to be surprised at the depth and
speed of the resulting leftward shift in American values. Seeing the
government deliver such an essential and powerful good to so many
people will permanently discredit many of the most fundamental
assumptions of the conservative worldview -- and in doing so, will
make it much, much harder for the cons to ever make themselves
politically relevant again.
There's nothing else that will do so much for so many so quickly --
and, at the same time, lay down the sturdy foundation for a long,
strong progressive future.
Sara Robinson is a twenty-year veteran of Silicon Valley, and is
launching a second career as a strategic foresight analyst. When she's
not studying change theories and reactionary movements, you can find
her singing the alto part over at Orcinus. She lives in Vancouver, BC
with her husband and two teenagers.
Health Care
By Sara Robinson, Campaign for America's Future. Posted October 31,
2008.
Giving Americans universal access to health care will undermine some
of the deepest and most persistent myths of the conservative
worldview.
We've worked hard to build a progressive political juggernaut that
will, God willing and the creek don't rise, put us in control of both
Congress and the Executive Branch starting just a week from now.
But it's one thing to get power, and another thing to keep it.
Someone (OK, it was Rick Perlstein) recently asked a group of friends
to name the single most important policy step progressives could take
to solidify a long-term grip on the government -- the kind of extended
run we had from 1932 through to the Age of Reagan.
There were a lot of good answers. Ending privatization was, I thought,
the best answer of all. Reinvesting in education is important if we
want to ensure that the next generation will support and sustain our
work and values. (I like to joke that the reason they call it "liberal
education" is that the more of it you have, the more liberal you're
likely to be. It's not quite accurate, but it's true enough.) Ensuring
that people's interactions with government are useful and positive was
another: In a lot of states, one afternoon at the DMV is enough to
make the most ardent good-government partisan turn into Grover
Norquist. (Maybe we don't want to drag the whole government into the
bathtub to drown it, but that SOB at Window 11 would be a fine place
to start.)
But in the end, I settled on "provide universal health care --
preferably single-payer" as my final answer. I chose this not just
because health care is an important public good (though it is), but
because I'm convinced that this single step will do more to rapidly
and permanently undermine the conservative worldview than anything
else we could possibly do.
How Universal Care Changes Everything: The Canadian Example
I've seen this happen, at very close range. Over the course of nearly
five years living in Canada, I've been continually impressed by the
durable, far-reaching role universal health care plays in expressing
and reinforcing the entire country's political philosophy. It's
probably not overstating things to say that the health care system is
at the very core of the Canadian sense of national identity, right up
there with the Mounties and the Hudson's Bay Company and well above
the Queen. Every time my neighbors go to the doctor, the experience
reaffirms a set of cultural assumptions that, over time, have made and
kept the country unwaveringly progressive.
First, they're reminded that taking care of each other is a core
Canadian value -- a cherished piece of who they are. In the Harper
era, the conservatives up here have tried hard to sell American-style
rugged individualism and the belief that "you're on your own" (or
should be), beholden to no one, needing no one. Most Canadians reject
this as a peculiar form of insanity: Their interdependence is so
patently obvious to them that it's like denying the existence of
gravity. They're so proud of their health care system -- and what it
says about them as a nation -- that, when asked to name the greatest
Canadian in history a few years ago, they chose Tommy Douglas, the
provincial premier (governor) from Saskatchewan who was the father of
the first single-payer plan.
Second, they're reminded that their government does useful and
important things that add immensely to their quality of life, and thus
deserves their ongoing support. And their high hopes also lead to high
expectations. They not only expect a lot from their health care
system; they also expect that their police will be respectful and
law-abiding, their city parks will be well-tended; and their public
buildings will be beautiful. If it takes money to make that happen,
they'll spend it -- but those who've been trusted with it had better
be damned careful. Where Americans believe in "life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness," the Canadian Constitution calls for "peace,
order, and good government." And that set of aspirations is reinforced
every time they walk into a doctor's office and get the treatment they
need.
Third, they're reminded that certain rights are inalienable, and
certain levels of inequality are intolerable -- and that every
Canadian has an intrinsic and equal entitlement to shelter, food,
education, and health care. In the conservative era, America's
hypercompetitive society has been very quick to throw away people who
haven't made the cut in some way -- people without money, connections,
or education; people with disabilities that make them economically
less viable; people who come from the wrong racial or religious group
or the wrong part of the country. You only deserve what you,
personally, are capable of earning. If you're badly equipped to do
that, it's your own damned fault. If you can't afford health care, you
deserve to die. In no case is it the taxpayers' job to step in and
make it right.
That attitude is completely foreign up here. It's notoriously hard for
immigrants to find good jobs here, but even immigrants get health
care. There's a heroin problem in downtown Vancouver, but even junkies
get health care. You don't lose your insurance just because you got
sick, or got disabled, or had to quit your job; even the unemployed
get health care.
Nobody falls through the cracks, no matter what condition their
condition is in. Nobody is chained to a job they hate because they
can't afford to lose their health care. Nobody has to pass up the
chance to go back to school, or take a year abroad, or stay home with
their kids. Nobody hesitates before starting their own business,
either. The result is a healthier, more skilled, better-traveled, more
fulfilled, more entrepreneurial and ultimately more competitive
workforce.
A lot of Americans seem downright threatened by the idea that
everybody deserves the same level of health care, delivered by the
same doctors. It sounds like wild-eyed socialist ranting (all this
crazy talk of "rights"!). For Canadians, though, that right is such a
basic assumption that it's not even up for discussion. A civilized
country does not turn any of its citizens away from the table. And
that idea, once set, opens up a broader sense of what we owe each
other. Health care is the social contract in daily action. Ultimately,
having that contract reaffirmed so intimately and so often affects how
my neighbors do business, how they treat the environment, and how they
relate to the rest of the world. The effects of this affirmation
ripple out into everything Canada touches.
Which brings us to the last observation: sharing a common health care
system reminds Canadians that they're all in this together. From the
richest to the poorest, everyone arrives and dies in the same
hospitals, tended by the same doctors. It's in nobody's interest to
let that system fail. (Prairie folks -- Canada's version of
Midwesterners -- will tell you that the northern climate extremes also
encourage people to look out for each other. And that makes some
sense, too: denying help to neighbors and strangers during the winter
in places like Edmonton or Winnipeg can all too easily become an act
of negligent homicide. In extreme conditions, free access to good
hospitals becomes a critical piece of that caretaking.)
The upper classes occasionally try to introduce privatization options
in one province or another; but the citizens/patients, the government,
and the health care unions have usually brought tremendous pressure to
bear to limit or end these experiments. Everybody understands that if
the wealthy bail on the system, there won't be the political will to
keep the quality high. This conversation is ongoing -- and the very
fact that they keep having it also helps keep the symbolic importance
of the system front and center. Everybody understands very clearly
what's at stake.
How Guaranteed Health Care Could Change America
If we could get Americans thinking along similar lines, all manner of
impossible things will become possible. With one fell stroke,
providing universal access to health care will instantly undermine
some of the deepest and most persistent myths of the conservative
worldview. People will, very quickly, remember that we cannot function
as a democracy unless we're deeply invested in common wealth and a
common future -- that "you're on your own" is simply a conservative
lie that allows the rich to divide and conquer. We'll be startled at
first to see just how much a single well-run government program can
actually deliver -- and then, as our confidence grows, we'll start
expecting more of other government efforts, and become more willing to
experiment with other kinds of programs. It's quite likely we'll start
asking hard questions about programs that divert taxpayers' money away
from these essential goods, and re-prioritize our spending. Thrown
together into a shared health care system, we may even learn some
compassion for each other, and start to heal some of the deep social
and political rifts that have divided us for so long.
If it works in the U.S. half as well as it does in Canada, the
conservatives will be forced to give up on all those plans for that
big 2012 comeback they're so eagerly anticipating right now. With
roughly a third of the country either uninsured or under-insured; and
everybody else at risk of losing their coverage at a moment's notice,
the sheer relief at having that burden lifted from 300 million souls
is going to make the old conservative nostrums sound absolutely
insane. Anybody who suggests that there's something wrong with
universal care, or that it was better the old way, or that this is
that Pure Communist Evil they've been warning about since the days of
McCarthy, is going to be dismissed out of hand as an ideological
crank. Because only people who buy their Kool-Aid by the barrel could
even think about going back to the awful way things were in 2008.
It's all happened just this way before, of course. Social Security did
all these same things in its time. It shut up the economic royalists
and reintroduced Americans to the value of social contracts and a
belief in the common good. Americans accepted these ideas so
completely that liberals were able to seize control of the country's
political discourse, and dominate it for the next four decades. On
most issues, the conservatives had no choice but to follow their lead.
Unfortunately, though, all this happened over 70 years ago -- so far
in the past that most Americans can't even imagine what life was like
before we had a guaranteed retirement income. We take that much too
much for granted now. Creating a long-term 21st-century progressive
renaissance depends on our ability to bring these same lessons home to
a whole new generation in the most vivid and unforgettable way
possible. Guaranteed health care will do that. It has the potential to
become the catalyst for a new season of American progressivism that
could last another 40 years.
This notion is no secret to conservatives, who figured out 15 years
ago that universal health coverage could well become their undoing. In
the heat of the 1993 debate over the proposed Clinton health care
plan, Bill Kristol wrote a famous strategy memo in which he argued
that "passage of the Clinton health care plan in any form would be
disastrous. It would guarantee an unprecedented federal intrusion into
the American economy. Its success would signal the rebirth of
centralized welfare-state policy at the very moment that such policy
is being perceived as a failure in other areas."
Conservatives are already acutely aware that if we get health care
that works, they're going to be shut out of power and out of the
conversation for decades to come. They also know that, come January,
they may find themselves too weak to put up a fight.
Presidential candidate Barack Obama knows it, too, which is why he's
made universal health care a central part of his agenda. If he
succeeds, I think people are going to be surprised at the depth and
speed of the resulting leftward shift in American values. Seeing the
government deliver such an essential and powerful good to so many
people will permanently discredit many of the most fundamental
assumptions of the conservative worldview -- and in doing so, will
make it much, much harder for the cons to ever make themselves
politically relevant again.
There's nothing else that will do so much for so many so quickly --
and, at the same time, lay down the sturdy foundation for a long,
strong progressive future.
Sara Robinson is a twenty-year veteran of Silicon Valley, and is
launching a second career as a strategic foresight analyst. When she's
not studying change theories and reactionary movements, you can find
her singing the alto part over at Orcinus. She lives in Vancouver, BC
with her husband and two teenagers.