“This is what change looks like”

A few months into the Obama presidency, a liberal friend tried to pin me down on my position on health care reform. Now, I’m not really hard to pin down—I support reform. I’ve been a pretty loud advocate for it. But he wanted to know my opinion on the public option, a measure he saw as essential. I was reluctant to take a militant position on the public option, not because I didn’t see it as a good idea (I do) but because I didn’t see it as the silver bullet of health care reform.

About the same time, I was arguing with conservative friend who thought that the Democrats were just trying to create a huge entitlement program for all the unemployed people, in effect (he argued) “buying” their vote with the currency of health care. I replied that health care reform isn’t about free goodies: it’s about making all of us more economically secure, regardless of whether we’re employed or not.

With such a contentious, divisive issue, I found myself again and again drawing on my experience with people who are actually in the health care industry. I’ve been watching and listening for more than ten years as industry people talked about reform. What I hear over and over again is that our health care system is broken, unsustainable, heading for disaster. I hear words like “catastrophe” and “crisis.”

Year after year, I’ve heard people talk about the failures of our system. And it was more than talk. The doctors and health system people—as well as many the insurance side, knew all too well how real lives were being damaged by the lack of access to health care. They saw the price people paid for being uninsured. We heard those stories over and over again. But when the speech or the conference was over, everyone would go their way, until the next conference or speech.

There just wasn’t enough consensus on how to fix the problem. And I frankly questioned how we ever would find consensus, given the entrenched positions of people, not only politicially, but from their different places as stakeholders in the industry.

One of the really remarkable things about this health reform campaign of the last year was how Obama was able to get industry players on board. The American Medical Association. The drug companies. AARP (representing the Medicare constituency). Even the health plans, though generally opposed, were muted in their criticism because they simply could not make the argument change was not needed.

You can certainly turn that around and say that Obama has sold out to the special interests. But the bottom line is that it would be impossible to bring about reform without the industry being part of the pro-reform team. Unless, of course, it was done with as a kind of top-heavy, big government takeover of health care—outlawing private insurance and replacing it with a government system, for example. In this political climate, who thinks that would have worked?

There were many times during this process I thought health care reform was dead. But time proved me wrong. Just as it has proven Obama right. This is what change looks like. It’s a long, hard, contentious process, and even when you get to the “end” there’s much more to do.

People voted for change in 2008. They voted for health care reform—it was a major campaign issue. They voted for a new approach to our economy and our politics. It’s been a long, hard, contentious battle for those things so far. But we have a president who is delivering on his promises.

And we have passed health care reform in the United States.

“Help Me, ObiWan-AG, You’re My Only Hope”

I’d say the chances of a court challenge overturning health care reform is just slightly less likely than Leia and friends blowing up the Death Star. And remember, folks, that was Hollywood.

There’s been a lot of talk about how the individual mandate (originally a Republican idea) is unconstitutional. Blah blah, Commerce Clause, 10th Amendment, woof woof. If people don’t choose to buy insurance, they’re not part of commerce, therefore, they can’t be forced to be part of the system. This ignores the fact that a) everybody gets sick sometime and 2) they will then access the system, which has real costs, presto, commerce!

This Pioneer Press article is one of many to throw cold water on that idea. Sure, the Supreme Court has been very activist lately, often throwing out decades of precedent to pursue their conservative vision of America, but it seems unlikely they would legislate this openly from the bench. And if they did find the individual mandate unconstitutional, there’s a quick fix: change it so it’s not a mandate—
just make it really hard to refuse.

Here’s part of the PriPress article:

“[The Supreme Court ruled] that staying out of the marijuana market rather than participating in it does affect commerce (even if the market is illegal). Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas and then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist sided with Raich, but the court's liberal wing prevailed, even winning over conservative Justice Antonin Scalia.

‘Raich seemed to stem the Rehnquist court's rollback of Congress' Commerce Clause power. And Justice Scalia went along with that, using reasoning that arguably expands Congress' reach,’ said Mehmet Konar-Steenberg, an associate professor at William Mitchell College of the Law. ‘So I don't know how much stomach there is at the Supreme Court right now to try to revive this line of cases.’

Furthermore, the links between health care and commerce are clearer, Konar-Steenberg said, pointing out — as others have — that many already purchase insurance and that those who don't have their emergency room bills picked up by everyone else. ‘These don't strike me as attenuated links to interstate commerce,’ Konar-Steenberg said.”

Yes, politicians, have been known to make deals before. You didn’t know that? Really?

I recently heard from a friend who was shocked, shocked to find that Democrats were making deals and twisting arms to pass health care reform. She insisted that this was far worse than anything that had ever gone on before. Well, I don’t know, but I suspect it wasn’t worse than this:

“A 15-minute vote was scheduled, and at the end of 15 minutes, the Democrats had won. The Republican leadership froze the clock for three hours while they desperately whipped defectors. This had never been done before. The closest was a 15-minute extension in 1987 that then-congressman Dick Cheney called “the most arrogant, heavy-handed abuse of power I’ve ever seen in the 10 years that I’ve been here.”

Tom DeLay bribed Rep. Nick Smith to vote for the legislation, using the political future of Smith's son for leverage. DeLay was later reprimanded by the House Ethics Committee.

The leadership told Rep. Jim DeMint that they would cut off funding for his Senate race in South Carolina if he didn't vote for the bill.

The chief actuary of Medicare, Rick Foster, had scored the legislation as costing more than $500 billion. The Bush administration suppressed his report, in a move the Government Accounting Office later judged ‘illegal.’”

(Read the whole thing, it’s pretty amazing.)

RIP Alex Chilton

On a non-political note... I named this blog Mod Lang after the Big Star song, thinking that it would be a place to talk about culture more than politics. Well, it hasn't turned out that way, but just the same, I feel I should note the passing of Alex Chilton, who along with Chris Bell founded Big Star.

I was introduced to the music of Alex Chilton and Big Star by Bob Richert, a record store owner and small-label enterpreneur in Bloomington, IN, in the spring of 1981. It was only fitting, then, that I met Alex Chilton in that same small college town a few years later.

I was in town, almost on a whim, to visit a girl. (Of course) I found out that Chilton was playing that weekend and decided to go see him. Since I had been doing some writing for a small music publication in Milwaukee, I decided to push my luck and see if I could get an interview.

Chilton said sure. A couple hours before his show, I met him in the dressing room and we talked about his career and music. I have the article, buried somewhere in my files, but I was a young an clumsy interviewer then, and I'm sure it doesn't say anything that Chilton fans haven't already heard.

He was cynical about the music business. He was proud of his recent work, which at that time consisted of minimalist solo albums (Feudalist Tarts was probably his latest or about to come out at that time.) --almost to the point of being dismissive of his Big Star work. Probably at that time he was sick of being asked about Big Star, which for all its critical acclaim, had left him nearly penniless.

For all his sour feelings for the music business, he was generous with his time and even asked if I wanted a joint. I'm not sure it helped my standing with him that I declined, but I'm sure it was a good idea I stayed clear-headed for the interview.

After the interview, Chilton played to maybe two dozen people in a no-frills club called Second Story. He played solo and included many choices that I found curious at the time, including old R and B standards and the Italian pop classic Volare (which was a staple for him for many years). Big Star songs were few and far between. But Chilton was following his muse, which he had doggedly done since leaving the Box Tops, and he clearly wasn't interested in reliving his pop-rock legacy.

At the end of the interview, I asked something along the lines of, since he was a hero to many budding songwriters, did he have any advice for them? He looked me in the eye. "Yeah, " he said. "Go to law school."

He was funny, he was cynical, he was dark, and he was light. He was, as he once wrote, "a true heart." He stayed true to his music and himself, even when that wasn't the smartest or easiest call. But he didn't let go of that vision. He held on, and so many times, his music has helped me to do the same.

Thanks for the interview, Alex. And everything.

From now on, let's say we call those "Jim DeMint boots"

Called it.

A couple of days ago, I thought of posting a Facebook status line saying, "COUNTDOWN TO SOCIALISM!!!"

Just as a snarky jab at my conservative friends who have been hyperventilating about this health care reform thing.

Then I thought, nah, let's be a little more gracious than that.

But lo and behold, someone's doing it for reals. "GOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE TAKEOVER IN: 12:23:43" reads prominent banner ads on the Washington Post website. "You Can Stop Obamacare: Act Now!" the ad continues. And "Paid for by the Republican Congressional Committee."

Keeping up the bullshit 'til the bitter end.

A brief history of health care reform in the US

Democrats: "We need health care reform. Let's do Plan A."
Republicans: "We don't like Plan A. We want Plan B."
(TEN YEAR PAUSE)
Democrats: "OK, we'll do Plan B."
Republicans: "No, we want Plan C."
(TEN YEAR PAUSE)
Democrats: "OK, Plan C, then."
Republicans: "Plan C is socialism. We want Plan D."
Democrats: "We're starting to think you're not serious about this."