Olympia Snowe, the Republican Senator from Maine recently said, "The public option would give the government too much power over the health care system."
For decades now, and for many in Washington in both political parties, this is the mantra that has been used to halt health care reform, despite the mountain of evidence from the other democracies that controlling health care spending will occur only if we give government much more power over the health care system.
Reform is good when government gives the insurance industry more money for more insurance. The industry can, in turn, continue to escalate the costs for health insurance as it sees fit.
This is called "painless progress." It is seemingly "win-win," at least in the short run. It is a major temptation for modern Democrats.
Think about the bail-outs of the financial industry. We have shelled out billions to investment firms, banks and insurance groups without demanding that these industries be placed under stricter government regulation.
Painless progress.
If reform passes with little or no capacity for controlling spending, the health insurance industry will simply jack up the prices for their products. There will be a general panic in the media: why are health care costs now going up faster after reform? Who brought this down on our heads? The Republicans will blame the Democrats and Fox New will go to town.
The Democrats will blame the insurance industry and many among the public and some in the media will support them.
Once again far, far too many will conclude that government can't get anything right. And who can blame them?
Very, very few will put their finger on the real culprit: our foolish, foolish ideas about the role of government in our democracy. We refuse to face facts; our democracy is too weak, not too strong, and not just in health care.
What would happen to any candidate for public office in either party who made the audacious claim that our democracy is too weak? That we need a stronger democracy, not a weaker one?
What would be my chances in running for Congress if I said just that? I would attract attention, initially, because it would sound so, well, different.
But very quickly all the media and many among the public would dismiss me as a fringe candidate, a "socialist."
This mantra for weak democracy persists in health care despite the mountain of evidence that every other democracy in the world has a successful health care system precisely because government is granted extensive power over critical parts of the health care system.
And here's the paradox: health care spending is much smaller in these countries, as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, and the public's health much better, because democracy is allowed to play a more prominent role.
The international evidence flatly contradicts what Senator Snowe---and others like her---believe about our democracy. Yet Snowe today is ever on the lips of the Obama administration.
This, to me, is evidence for the ruin that years of magical thinking about health care---and politics generally--- has brought.
Magical thinking is when we allow what we believe about a state of affairs to trump what we might discover needs doing about a state of affairs. Magical thinking is about the power of belief, the trust that certitude will see us through.
When Ronald Reagan said that government is the problem, not the solution he was making a religious claim, not an empirical one. He was saying that what makes America great is that it keeps its democracy weak and allows the private sector to roam free, taking whatever casualties it can get away with.
I am terrified that our new administration is stacked up to the ceiling with people who take the tenet of "weaker is better" to bed with them. There is no other conclusion to be drawn from the scandalous way we have thrown money at Wall Street and asked for almost nothing in return.
No matter how many experts tell us that we are making a huge mistake by not demanding concessions and by not putting more stringent controls in place, the Democrats insist on painless progress.
Spend more, demand less, and hope that when the next shit-storm hits they will be retired and working as lobbyists somewhere in the Capitol region.
And we as members of the public will be asked to wait a little longer for real reform to turn things around. .
Magical thinking is a species of religious thinking. Our endorsement of the private sector and our distrust in government is a religious belief that we hang onto no matter the evidence. Magical thinking is belief in the power of belief.
The power of magical thinking is that it isn't thinking at all. It is a religious affirmation in one's certitude, one's testimony about the kind of person one is.
Yet, as I see it, what we believe in---despite the evidence from abroad or at home---what we are sure of without the need for further evidence, will be the ruin of us, and not just in health care.
Comments