Health Reforms and Civil Disorder in the USA
Posted Under: Health Care,Obama,Sarah Palin,US Politics
Whilst I am always in favour of a ‘re-politicising’ of politics, or a reclamation of politics as an ideological entity rather than a form of droll, pseudo-scientific administration, some of the scenes in the USA this week, with Republican Party activists actively promoting a situation which is bordering on civil disorder in protest at Obama’s much-vaunted health reform bill, have been beyond despicable.
Whilst coverage of the issue has been predictably partisan even in articles positing themselves as ostensibly neutral reports, there is broad agreement that the polarised atmosphere has veered into the downright nasty. Effigies of Democratic congressmen have been strung up outside their offices in unpleasant invocations of Jim Crow, and coarse heckling of Democratic meetings and Q and A sessions on the proposals by Republican officials insisting that they are simply ‘ordinary moms’ have become fairly commonplace. Of course, they have every right to voice their disapproval. But the deliberate fostering of this vitriolic, all-consuming antipathy to a president taking a pro-active approach to one of the most repugnant aspects of a country that otherwise has a great deal to commend it, that of healthcare provision, is repellent.
As we are all aware, Obama is no socialist. And his healthcare plan, whilst certainly far-reaching, is not bereft of problems. But how it can be condemned as ‘evil’ is beyond me. Amongst the main bones of contention for the foaming-at-the-mouth Right is the fact that the budget deficit will, in all probability, rise, due to the shortfall in an extension of provision that will cost in excess of $100bn per year, as opposed to the administration’s own $50bn estimate. I accept that these are trying times, but would it be preferable to exercise a wonderful degree of fiscal discipline which induces erections over at at the IMF whilst over 47 million people suffer from a lack of access to even the most basic healthcare provision, something the rest of the developed world takes for granted? A standard issue economics textbook might answer in the affirmative. But if it someone doesn’t challenge the status quo at some point-and it has certainly become more and more entrenched during the Bush era-then it simply won’t happen. On an issue as vital as this, the budget deficit can be made up with curtailments of other forms of spending; no fiscal issue can attain the unparallelled moral importance supplying poor familes with adequate healthcare.
Another ‘problem’ making veins in right-wing foreheads bulge is the fact that stringent regulation of insurance providers-for example, they will not be allowed to charge more than double the premium paid by their lowest-risk customer (eg, a 25 year old, teetotal personal trainer) to their highest risk purchasers-are to be introduced. Similarly, ‘insurance exchanges’, essentially mechanisms facilitating a situation whereby each state will provide access to cheap and fairly wide-ranging healthcare plans at similar rates, regardless of personal status, will be based upon heavy state subsidies-only natural, if you consider the implications of this. The corollary of all this is that private insurers-one of the key financial and rhetorical backers of the current unrest-will become much less competitive, and possibly go out of business in significant numbers. Workplace insurance policies will probably also be largely reduced in number, as employers opt out and replace them with a substitute tax on employees given the rising cost of the former. This has predictably riled the well-off, notably that old, borderline-retarded chestnut, Sarah Palin. “The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down’s syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide… whether they are worthy of healthcare,” she wrote on Facebook.
This is a shrill, hyperbolic, thinly-veiled reference to the inevitable rationing that would ensue under Obama’s plan. First year university economics 101 will tell you that in a marketised economy, if you disregard the principle of market equilibrium and make a good available at a price which does not ensure adequate satisfaction of demand at any given point, using state subsidies or controls to achieve this, then demand will far exceed availability or the ability to produce at a level sufficient to satisfy it. Therefore, this will lead to a form of rationing in health provision, as people ‘excessively’ consume health products and services which might be deemed ‘non-essential’-mental health counselling, hearing aids and so forth-at an ‘excessive’ rate due to their newly affordable, non-marketised prices. The vast majority of economics professors will, understandably, tell you that rationing in a market economy is to be avoided in all but desperate situations (it disrupts the most important principle of the free market, that of natural equilibria), the example of the second world war being a favourite indicator.
Now I don’t know about you, but I would call nearly 50 million Americans-well over three quarters of the total population of Britain-without any kind of health insurance, in a society that doesn’t really believe in free shit like us fuzzy British liberals, a pretty fucking desperate situation. If some rationing of the more ‘frivolous’ aspects of healthcare (I don’t like to use the word, but for the sake of clarity and briefness of argument), plus a reversal of Dubya’s tax cuts for the rich and possibly an extension of the budget deficit are the prices that need to be paid in order to finally get the ball rolling on a long-overdue reform of a scandalous situation, then so be it. The idea that she might have to take a bit of a downgrade in order that the worst off enjoy a huge upgrade might appall Sarah Palin, but its just tough titties. Besides which, her hysterical pronouncements assume a complete collapse of the whole private insurance industry, which simply won’t happen-it’s America, for god’s sake. There are more than enough wealthy people to sustain it for those who want it, despite the pathetic fretting over the end of tax breaks for those earning over £250,000. It just seems appalling that they should begrudge subsidising others, upon many of whom their affluent lifestyles are predicated, to the extent that they enjoy reasonable medical coverage.
I don’t want to come across as yet another mindless, nu-lab Obama cheerleader; I certainly am not one of his most ardent supporters, and am fully aware of the unprededented corporate marketing machine that put him where he is through cynical cultivation of the vacuous and the MTV-saturated. But he is bravely, and at the risk of rupturing his treasured consensus-building and reconciliation, on both intra and inter-party levels, challenging the entrenched and monstrously unjust status quo in a manner that makes the (defeated) Bill Clinton equivalent many years ago look timid. The knee-jerkers and reactionaries treating this issue as if it was on a par with the liquidation of the kulaks should be thoroughly ashamed.
Reader Comments
Some really excellent points. I really am baffled by the reaction of the American public to this. If Obama’s health care reform is socialist, Britain is the USSR.
It’s not the American public that’s reacting, it’s big business. Health insurance accounts for sixteen percent of US GDP, and any, however small, reform is going to make inroads into that. And unless the American left grasps that this is class struggle on the big scale – i.e on the scale of the Civil Rights movement – there is going to be no serious health-care reform. The problem with Obama’s bill is that there is no mass movement outside of Congress bringing pressure to bear in favour of reform. Success is only going to come when the Sarah Palins fear that, if they don’t allow reform,then 44 American cities will go up in flames (the number that were lit up the night they killed Martin Luther King). The issue is that important.The right know it. It’s about time the left realised this too.
JGW, good points-I don’t think I made it clear enough that big business, in particular the cynically and euphemistically named ‘healthcare industry’-who are fomenting this reaction. Also have to agree with your point regarding the need for an exogenous, powerful mass movement bringing irresistible pressure to bear on the unrepentant guardians of the status quo. At the moment, though, I’m unsure how such a consciousness could be created in any concrete sense…
“It’s not the American public that’s reacting, it’s big business.”
The reaction is spearheaded by big business, the Republican party, and right-wing shock jocks, but it is undeniable that a popular anti-reform movement has appeared that has a momentum of its own.
Opponents of reform can’t be dismissed as an out-of-touch elite. There appear to be significant numbers of Americans genuinely convinced that any reform of the US health system is going to hurt their interests. Whether it’s false consciousness, fear of higher taxes, or simple conservative prejudice against a Democratic President I can’t be sure.
US trade unions and other parts of Obama’s progressive coalition are organising counter-demonstrations in favour of reform.
I don’t see how salivating over the image of 44 American cities “going up in flames” is going to help the situation.
Must say though, I am pretty impressed with some aspects of America’s democracy. Up and down the country politicians are putting themselves before packed – and often hostile – public meetings to push their policy proposal. Impossible to imagine it happening here. http://tinyurl.com/l9xltd
It would never happen here Reubs, and things like this are one of the reasons I deplore unthinking anti-Americanism. Everyone involved in pushing this proposal in person and in front of a live, unmanaged and often hostile/hickish congregation should be applauded. Here, it would simply be decreed from on high by some despicable, automaton New Labour shell of a human being.
Absolutely. Give me a choice between America’s rough democracy – hicks and ugly republicans included – and our sanitized democracy, and I know which i would choose.
“Up and down the country politicians are putting themselves before packed – and often hostile – public meetings to push their policy proposal. Impossible to imagine it happening here”
Of course an anti-American cynic would point out that we don’t need that here because we already have all the policies that American liberals want.
JGW is right. The town hall meetings may give the impression of democracy and public debate, but it is in Congress that power resides, and the people are not invited – unlike the lobbyists for the health insurance industry. Unless they are forced to impose changes by campaigns outside of the main political structures, the Democrats (or, at the very least, their ‘Blue Dog’ minority) will inevitably bend to the will of their opponents, who are far more wealthy and powerful than the outraged Republicans shouting down their local Congressman from the back rows of town halls. Healthcare is literally a life and death issue; the people obstructing its reform must be treated as the malicious and greedy scum they are, no different than someone hoarding food from the starving.