#64 – Dick Bernard: the Health Care Reform Posts: a summation

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This is post #8 of 13.  Other Posts on this topic: July 24, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, August 1,5,6,7,10,15.
“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”  Mark Twain (attributed)
Friday we took our 10-year old grandson to the local county fair.  It was his birthday, and he enjoyed the afternoon. (The Pig Race was the highlight: three heats, ten piglets.  That’s what Fair’s are famous for!  More in a moment on that.)
Walking the grounds, I saw our local state Senator standing by the DFL (Democrat) booth.  We know her, and stopped to say “hello”.  I asked her if there were many questions about health care reform.  She said it was amazing how much misinformation was out there, just from people who had stopped by and asked about this and that.
Her revelation was no new insight for me: just in my own little corner of the internet world, it is incredible – almost scary – to see the wild stuff that flows into my ‘in-box’, including from senders who know me.  (The stuff from people who don’t know me is far wilder.)  The lie machine is stuck on fast forward.  And people are believing the lies.  It seems that people know there is a serious problem, but are much like a person standing on a railroad track, watching a train barreling down on them, but paralyzed into non-action.  Not a good result…for the person.
Even in his hey-day, the late 19th century, Mark Twain was right: lies travel much faster than the fastest pig in that pig race at the Fair, while the truth is back in the barn, still “putting on its shoes”.  That’s why misinformation is so preferred a message, and so effective, at least in the short term.   But unlike the pig race, the lies are no laughing matter…including for the people who believe and often spread them, without knowing the difference.  Lies always have consequences.  The truth outs, but often not till the damage has been done.
When I  began thinking about this series of Health Care Reform posts a few weeks ago, I had no idea about what it would look like.  I did want to summarize how I saw the debate was developing , and I wanted to tell my personal story from 1963-65 – the time when my experience with the American health care system began.  The remaining six simply evolved on their own, ending with this post, the 8th.  (There may be more, but more likely from others.)
I’ve thought about this topic a great deal, largely because of my own history.
I’d like to leave behind a few very brief summary thoughts.
1)  The American Middle Class (the vast majority of us) is the real victim of the lack of deep reform of health care, and knows it.  Paradoxically, it is this same Middle Class which is being relied on to kill the very reform it needs, and the Middle Class comes through.  Sowing Fear, loathing, and manipulation of public opinion, especially by advertising, works wonders. 
2) An effective strategy to manipulate the public is to toss out fragments of the huge issue (i.e. will “illegals” be covered?).  This way the person can be against something, and help kill everything.  It is a good strategy, but offensive.
3)  Excessive profits (greed) is a very big problem. It is small consolation that in the end this greed will probably ruin even the profiteers.  Paradoxically, big business, which says it reveres competition, is not so adoring when the competitor (VA, Medicare, etc.) is more efficient (cheaper), and thus can compete.  Public efficiency doesn’t generate private profit.  Profits are the be all and end all.  In this case, competition is bad, killed or controlled.
4)  We Americans are victims of our own mythology of American superiority and invulnerability.  We still live in a fantasy world.  We should know better. Fantasy worlds have a tendency to collapse without warning. 
5)  Most troubling of all to me is that the now-minority opposition to reform demands negotiations, but then effectively refuses to negotiate or accept compromise.  It’s “my way or the highway” – a sense that the only right way is their way, alternatives be damned.   
At the County Fair which began this column, our grandson also lost a few shekels at a carny stand, the softball toss, and got a few midway rides.  Later at the pig race, all the ten piglets who made the round (one named BoarHog Obama – good laugh) each won the prize of an Oreo cookie – they’re no dummies.  Neither are the carny’s who can count on the rube’s. 
In the Health Care Reform debate, the Truth is, about now, getting up to the starting gate.  Will the common people who defend the status quo, and run the risk of being its  victims take any time to listen?  Will they demand change that is in their best interest?
Learn the issues and their real implications, and carry the truth.

#63 – Jim Reed and Carol Ashley: Comments on the American narrative and the demonization of words

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This is post #7 of 13.  The others: July 24, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, August 2,5,6,7,10,15.
Moderators note: During the posting of this Health Care Reform series, a number of individuals wrote me on various aspects of the problem.  James Reed and Carol Ashley had two quite different takes on the target (my opinion) of this intense debate: “middle class” American people.  Both Carol and Jim make important points.  The reader can interpret.  Both posts are shared with the writers permission.
James Reed, July 29, 2009:   The greatest obstacle to overcome is the public’s belief in America’s exceptional-ism, the belief that the American version of any endeavor is necessarily the best.  That belief projects America’s military forces as the most capable, its schools and universities the most instructive, its products the most inventive, its sports the most entertaining, its care for the young and old the most comprehensive, its economic system the most fair, its lifestyles the most advanced, and by extension, its health care services the most beneficial.  Those beliefs underlie all the arguments against change and undermine all efforts to introduce change.  Those beliefs allow stories of failures in other health care systems to be accepted without question while stories of America’s failures are dismissed out-of-hand.  Those beliefs make statistics on America’s health system meaningless except for the few cases, like number of treatments for prostate cancer, where America claims superiority.
Unfortunately, America’s middle class are those most entrenched in American exceptional-ism.  Taught so throughout our school system, we in the middle class hold tightly to that belief because the belief adds status to our lives.  Whatever our life history, occupation, or economic status, we belong to the best system the world has ever seen.  What change could be necessary in a system that produces the best?
The challenge for those seeking change to the health care system is then to devise change in a way that continues that sense of exceptionalism.
Carol Ashley, July 30, 2009:  I’ve been on Medicare for a very long time due to disability. I’m very grateful for it.
But what I really want to shout into some reporter’s mike is that we have a lot of socialism going on.  Do people want unsocialized police departments, fire departments, court systems, roads, education?  If we didn’t have socialism in these areas, rural areas like mine wouldn’t have or would have inadequate police departments, fire departments, etc.  And can you imagine paying tolls on all roads?  I wonder how many people would like that?
And there is non-governmental socialism in existence like car insurance (though mandated and regulated by government) and our local electric cooperative.  Yes, in the latter, we each pay our own electric bills according to usage, but that covers getting electricity restred to places when it doesn’t affect me.
Right now, we have a form of socialism called private health insurance which pays for emergency room visits from the non-insured through increased costs.  The public pays in very indirect ways through multitudes of bankruptcies that occur due to lack of or inadequate health insurance.
It’s time for people to stop panicking on the socialism thing and to decide when, where and how they want it.