Super Bowl Update

During last Friday's On Point, David Gergen had some interesting points to make during the show's "Week in the News" discussion. He was speaking about last week's vitriolic-ly expressed opposition to the passage of the health-care reform bill. Were the threats, taunts, and thrown bricks simply partisan politics run amuck or were they inappropriate expressions of something deeper?

David Gergen made the point that, in modern times, all the federal government's sweeping social reforms -- Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and the landmark Civil Rights Bills of 1965 and 1966 -- have been passed when Democrats had a substantial Congressional majority.  But, Gergen pointed out, they were also all passed with significant bipartisan support.

Health care reform, however, was passed without bipartisan support. The GOP walked through the vote in oppositional lockstep. And, Gergen pointed out, historically when this kind of partisan divide has happened in Congress, people, sadly, have tended to become inflamed. And those of us who don't become inflamed over the actions of Congress, become alarmed by the behavior of those who do.

Mr. Gergen went on to caution that we do need to remember that  "there’s a deep philosophical divide between these two parties. One [the Republicans] has a view of private enterprise and a self-reliant view which is much different from the Democratic view that the government is there to help people who can’t help themselves. And [that it] ought to embrace those people.”

This, of course, is something I've heard countless times. Yet it was interesting to think about this "deep philosophical divide" in the specific context of last week's passage of health-care reform and the angry reaction to it.

Some very simple questions came to mind, that I think need to be answered simply and directly before we go back to our customary political posturing.

1. Is health care a fundamental right? If someone gets sick, do they have a right to proper medical care? Or should medical treatment be the private privilege of those who can pay for it, personally or through insurance?
2. If health care is a fundamental right, who's responsible for providing it? Who's job is it to see that sick people get the medical treatment they need?
3. How does this all fit in with the "deep philosophical divide" between our two American political parties?

Okay, so I got questions. You got answers? Thoughts? Opinions?

The insurance industry had been making nice noise since it became clear that the Obama administration was taking a hard look at its practices. Had been making nice noise. And then, early this week, the industry returned to form by releasing a  PricewaterhouseCoopers report (which it had commissioned) claiming that Americans can't afford to reform our current health care system.

I think in images, and the image that arose when I read about this report was of a very big battleship bristling with guns abruptly running down fake friendly colors, running up a Jolly Roger, and then, with no warning, firing a broadside at President Obama and Congress. Reading reaction to the PwC report in a wide variety of sources has lead me to believe that a number of people might be having the same image. For example, Jordan DiPietro of Motley Fool, writing for msnbc.

Today, President Obama shot back in his weekly radio/internet address, "Taking the Insurance Companies on Down the Stretch."  Quite far along in the 6-minute speech was something The New York Times considered worth a front page article, "Obama Threatens Insurers' Anti-Trust Exemption," which said that Obama's

. . . signal of support for reviewing the industry’s anti-trust exemption put him in league with Democratic leaders in Congress pushing for repeal or revision of the McCarran-Ferguson Act, which was passed in 1945 to keep regulation of insurers in the hands of the states. Legislation has been introduced in both the House and the Senate to partially or completely overturn the law.

If that isn't a return broadside aimed at the insurance industry, then I don't know what a broadside is. So, it seems to me (if you'll forgive a cliche or two) the gloves are off, the battle has been joined.

Ben Tillet (1860-1943), British socialist, trade union leader and politician, once said that "capitalism is capitalism as a tiger is a tiger and both are savage and pitiless toward the weak"

Somehow Mr. Tillet's words came to mind this week whenever I read or thought about anyone's effort to reform health care. What we have in America is the tiger of capitalism caged by representative government.

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I was all set to blog about Edwardian puppet shows (for good, journalistic reasons), when the insurance industry released its study saying that health care reform would lead to in impressive increases in insurance premiums. And there went the puppet show idea. (At least for today. If you're curious about what I have to say, there's always tomorrow. These blogs are ravenous beasts, you know, always, always, always needing to be fed!).

Back to health care reform, I went searching for some semi-predigested assessment of the accuracy of the report and found it--no surprise--in Time, the inventor of the semi-predigested assessment. The article "How Valid is the Insurers' Attack on Health Reform" is an excellent overview, from a conservative enough, pro-business enough source to make it reasonably reliable on this issue.

As a personal and literary aside to this latest health care reform flap. . .

I read what I term "good trash" for 30-40 minutes, five days a week, while going nowhere on an elliptical. Currently, my "good trash" book is John Grisham's The Appeal. It's another of his stories about decent people doing battle against evil Big Business, in this case a large chemical firm that killed people with its cost-cutting habit of dumping lethal chemicals into pits.

Mr. Grisham likes to pit little people in the right against rich, greedy people who want more. The Appeal takes on Big Money's corruption of state politics (a state Supreme Court race), corruption of decent people through their religious beliefs, manipulation of homophobia for political gains. I'm about 4/5th through the book, and it looks as though this time, depressingly, Big Money is going to win.

Mr. Grisham has already taken on the insurance industry directly in 1997's The Rainmaker--and in that book, the little guys on the side of right happily beat up on the greedy big guys. I do admire this author's frequent use of his own bully pulpit to keep his readers mindful of the fact that greed is a capitalistic society's most frequent failing. John Grisham, through master story-telling, keeps us worried that a lot of skulduggery may be going on behind Big Money's curtain of public relations and late-blooming "reports."

Reading this man's books always makes me feel a bit paranoid about what all those Big Business people are up to. But then, perhaps, that's not a bad way to feel in the face of the current debate over health care reform.

Jessica Penner is a sunny person. She and I sat together for over an hour-and-a-half, talking about life, health, the insurance industry, traveling, writing, making a living. She laughed a lot and made me laugh.

There isn't enough time in a news feature to tell more than a snippet of Jessica's story. As a very small child she was diagnosed with Ollier's Disease, which meant that her childhood was filled with what sounds like a succession of brutal surgeries. Jessica, being Jessica, speaks of these surgeries in positive terms, saying they kept her out of a wheelchair.

As a college student she began having seizures, which lead to the discovery of an enormous brain tumor.  Jessica, being Jessica, is quick to point out it was a non-malignant brain tumor. The story of her battle with her insurance company to get the needed treatment is what's reported in the "One Person's Voice" I put together for WMRA's Morning Edition. A longer version is available on the web.

 But enough about illness. Jessica Penner has a day job that pays the rent; a night job as a poet. Here, for your reading pleasure, are a couple of her poems.


OCTOBER 6, 1981

The day Anwar Sadat was assassinated
my parents drove east, toward a city I'd never seen.
We'd passed the empty fields curving west,
the tractors standing idle, cold.
My daddy, thinner then, was at the wheel
of our silver-fish car.
Mommy was knitting, the sun glowing
through her hair.
And there I was in the back, alone
on the cracked red seat,
fake leather that burned your skin
when you hopped in after swimming.
We skimmed the surface of faint hills,
glassed ponds, a twisted tree, alone in emptiness.
Cows with misted eyes huddled in the early chill.
I sat waiting to be hurtled into the arms of men
in the towers of that city;
men who would fool me with their benign khakis and ties,
only to wear cold white white white gowns
as I was arranged in a green bed without socks.

Before the day of The Towers,
I stepped from a plane into Cairo,
where gleaming white-uniformed men pointed rifles--
not at me, but the crowds before me
who twisted and swelled
like the fields we'd slipped through so easily,
as if the world of knives would solve our souls,
could carve me a freed forever body.
As though my father's expert trolling
of his silver could straighten the tree on the hill.
The sun rose in the east,
a backlight to a single minaret,
cloaked in the smog and sweat of 17 million.
The river glided through her basin,
echoing the tilted voices of me
calling me to pray.
Calling me to bow.
Strangely, I felt at home.

WORCESTER'S POET

Master of the whale-roads,
let the white wings of the gulls
spread out their cover.
You have become like us,
disgraced and mortal.
              from "The Wellfleet Whale" by Stanley Kunitz

one
There are those who would say Blue Mountains climb
so low because they are strident with youth
rather than age. I tended to believe
this contradiction as we crossed the soft
valleys that lay like a covered child.
We whispered a conversation within
hearing of the never-young-nor-old man
driving the darkness, pushing in the night,
away from faint lights to the brighter orb--
this Poet, whose frail voice managed to sound
through the wind of those snuffle-shoulders.
You slipped your hand snug under my neck that
slid in cold that solidified words spun
far too carefully divine to speak of.
Life-anointed, your hand cradled my head,
drew mantles against my too-muscled death;
ranges of Mountains beat with youth not age.

two
We stroked through the lake beside Bethesda,
like the night we rolled through dim neighborhoods,
searching for the home-face of a Poet
whose whale lay upon the sand, gasping breath,
as if the struggle might make the difference.
Your hair was muffled rather than shone by the lopsided streetlights that hid numbers
of discovery from our steadfast gaze.
A crowd of ancient houses stood upon
ground willing to hold the Poet's birth-place--
but there was no shrine to state his glory,
no proof that he ever drew a whale's breath
in a city I would curse if your face
had not pricked radiation's hold on skin
that loosened hair upon pillows like chaff.
We stroked through the lake beside an angel
who healed with a beat of wings light as stone.

I'm currently editing a WMRA's "One Person's Voice" segment that I hope (do cross your fingers, please) will be ready to air during Wednesday's Morning Edition. It is the story of Jessica Penner, a young woman who's been dealing with Ollier's disease (bony tumors that affect limb growth) since she was a small child.

First and foremost, Jessica's is a story of courage, remarkable resilience, and a seemingly indestructible sense of humor. But it's also a story of the power insurance companies currently exercise over doctors' ability to prescribe treatments.

There's probably no more contentious issue in both Washington and our communities at this moment than health care reform. It's that rare issue that is both national in scope and personally important. The bills before Congress are terribly complex; indeed the central, broad-brush issue involved is terribly complex: What should be the role of government in maintaining our individual well-being?

I'm a reporter, not a pundit. It's not my job to lecture; it's my job to tell stories. I have long thought, however, that the best way to understand a complex issue is to first do the hard work of educating oneself on what's involved, and then to filter that information through the lens of actual experience.

A lot of the health care debate hinges on whether or not privately-run insurance companies do the best job possible of safe-guarding their policy-holders' health. I've never had to turn my life over to an insurance company, but Jessica Penner has. To me, that makes her experiences as relevant to the debate as the wisest words of the wisest policy wonk in the world.

Programming note: Virginia Insight (today at 3 pm) addresses an important health care issue, the ethics of human research trials. Tom Graham's guest will be Robin Fretwell Wilson, J.D. - Professor of Law, Washington and Lee University, and co-editor of the new book, Health Law and Bioethics: Cases in Context.

Note: Ned sent this to me in an e-mail and I found it an interesting addition to the health care debate. Several of you have let me know that you've had trouble posting comments, so I wanted to say that if that happens, you're welcome to send comments directly to me at mwoodroof@gmail.com and I'd be happy to post them for you.

Ned Studholme's way to reform health care: I would like to suggest a compromise insurance based program that is likely to meet the requirements of both sides of the health care debate. This compromise is based on the simple notion that it is appropriate for the federal government to initiate and operate programs that manage the types of .risk that can have a catastrophic effects on individual citizens. Within our domestic health care industry, this is addressed as major medical and/or catastrophic health insurance.

Because this type of insurance involves covering the costs of extremely expensive medical events that have a very low risk of occurring, premiums are high and the benefits of coverage are rarely enjoyed by the consumer. The suggested compromise involves full participation of the federal government in this, and only this, segment of the market. The entire remainder of the health care insurance market would be left to the private sector.

The federal program would simply cover all medical and Rx costs for every citizen that exceed 20% of annual income, using the definitions of households and dependents in the existing tax code. In this manner, a family with an income of $100,000 per year would be covered for everything over $20,000 per year, and a family earning $30,000 would have a $6000 medical ceiling.

Any additional insurance would be up to the individual. If insurance from the private sector is desired, the premiums would be driven down sharply because the required coverage would be truncated where the federal coverage takes over.

Savings to the consumer would accrue from the lower cost of private insurance, and to the taxpayer because Medicare rates would apply to all of the federal coverage. The biggest savings would come from the fact that the federal government would be taking on no more risk than the private sector does today, but would not need to charge a premium
for that risk.

In addition, no new federal entity would need to be created to manage the program, as it would become part of the normal private sector practice to determine eligibility and to forward the bills when the ceiling was reached.

Finally, the costs to the consumer and/or taxpayer can be fine tuned simply by sliding the suggested 20% ceiling up or down to define the risk limits falling into the private sector market.

In case you missed Maureen Dowd's latest column in The New York Times, here's a link to it: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/opinion/13dowd.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=dowd&st=Search   

Racism resurgent in America?

Obama as an Other?

I've studied the Tea Party pictures that I've been able to find, and I have yet to see a person of color in them. The rhetoric coming out of these gatherings seems to me to be reactive and fearful. I'm assuming these are good people, confused as I am, by economic forces at play that they don't understand; but that, rather than taking the time to educate themselves and address hard reality, the tea partiers, for the most part, are simply unleashing verbal blasts of discontent. 

So today, I'd like to know what you think: Does the color of our brainy president's skin have anything to do with the level of anger in the protests against health care reform?

What do you think?

I'm listening to Morning Edition as I post, to one of the Blue Dog Democrat's saying this: "The art of politics is compromise; what's possible."

Governance in this country is achieved through political maneuvering. To reform health care, President Obama must be a political animal. Last night, both columnists conservative David Brooks and liberal Mark Shields said on PBS "The News Hour" that Barrack Obama had not only made his case for health care reform well, but had made his best speech as president. High praise indeed from a couple of well-respected political pundits.

What President's up against  in the political arena, however, was demonstrated by the (mostly) sour looks on the faces of Republican members of Congress, the infamous outburst by South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's puzzling post-speech  statement, “There's a bipartisan agreement on the need for reform. (But) he set up a false choice between a massive government takeover or no reform at all. Frankly, that isn't the choice.”

So, my fellow WMRAers. What do you think? Not so much about health care reform, as about President Obama's political chops. Does he have the level of political skill and toughness necessary to get a bill achieving health care reform through Congress?

Well, it's hard to work in public radio and blog about anything else today. Or read The New York Times or The Washington Post, both of which have significant pre-speech coverage on the front page above the fold.

My hope is that all of us will do tonight exactly what our first grade teachers told us to do so often: Sit still and listen. We owe it to ourselves and our families to be apolitically curious about what our President has to say tonight; to be open-minded in our consideration of what health care reform really means.

My questions are, how did health care become a partisan issue? Why would anyone want to spread misinformation about the current attempt to improve a system that's pretty obviously run amuck? What's wrong with open-minded consideration of the reform options that are on the table? What's to be gained by making people who would probably benefit tremendously from health care reform, afraid of it?

Those are serious questions. Anyone got any serious answers?