Swiftboating health care reform
By Max J. Castro
Whipped up by demagogues, bankrolled by the insurance lobby, the debate over health care reform has brought out all of the nation’s Obama-hating paranoia, resentment and fear concerning government in general and the Obama administration in particular.
The mob atmosphere at the town hall meetings being conducted by members of Congress in their districts has been no upsurge of grass roots dissent. The tactic of shouting down the speakers and shutting down the debate follows a carefully orchestrated objective crafted by political operators: intimidating members of Congress into killing any progressive element in the health care reform legislation now being considered.
Many lies have been spewed out and many bogeymen have been trotted out — death panels, euthanasia, illegal immigration, and abortion — in order to arouse the gullible, the prejudiced, and the resentful into a frenzy of rage. Sowing confusion, spreading doubt, and outright deceit and distortion have been the order of the day.
The health care debate has become a proxy for something much bigger: what kind of society the twenty-first century United States will be. Although they are a minority, there are many people who are still stunned and outraged that Barack Obama won a pivotal election; the health care battle is the first issue bringing them out of the woodwork. Many feel that defeating Obama on health care means killing his chances of being a successful president.
Universal health care also implies a society with a certain level of solidarity. Look at the people who are coming out to drown out the town hall debates. There is scarcely a black or brown face among them; those who are least likely to have insurance and to benefit from a new dispensation are not being heard.
The rabble rousers and their supporters are treating the health care debate as a do over of the election, another bite at the apple. They are not reconciled to defeat. Hatred of Barack Obama is the common denominator. One man showed up at an Obama town meeting with a gun and placard saying that it is time to water the tree of liberty, an allusion to a phrase from Jefferson that speaks of the need for the tree of liberty to be periodically nourished by the blood of tyrants. It was a call for a presidential assassination: clear, brazen, plain and simple. This is as dangerous as dynamite.
The forces for change need to recover the initiative and not allow a motley crew of reactionaries to intimidate them, hijack the discussion, and frame the argument on health care. Obama and his supporters must take the offensive and dissipate the myths and fallacies of the naysayers.
The opponents of health care reform are a coalition of the very rational and the very irrational. The profits of insurance companies have increased by more than 400 percent in the last decade; they have every reason to oppose a public insurance scheme that could severely cut into their gigantic revenues. Many members of Congress have had their campaign coffers filled by the insurance industry’s “generosity.” That is the bottom line; the rest is sound and fury signifying (almost) nothing.
