ken watts
mary anna hickling

I'VE PROMISED TO RATE the Republican plan on the democracy scale, as well, but before I do that I need to be clear about a fundamental difference between that plan and both of the Democratic plans.

The Democrats are writing real legislation. They fully expect it to become law. Because of this, they have had to consider all sorts of things that the Republicans didn't.

They have had to worry about practical matters, guarding against problems a policy change could trigger. They have had to worry about getting enough votes to pass the bill.

All of these things make the bill longer and more complicated. All of them make it less ideological.

The Republican plan, by contrast, was never expected to become law.

Its authors could ignore many pragmatic problems, and didn't have to make any compromises to win votes which they never expected to get.

The result is that the Republican plan is probably a better reflection of the ideology of its authors. It won't tell us, as clearly as the Democratic bills do, what Republicans might really pass given the chance, but it will tell us what they would most like health reform to look like.

The question I will be asking of the Republican plan is the same one I asked of the Democratic plan—In what direction does it shift power?

Toward big corporations and the wealthy (capitalism)?

Toward government ownership of the entire process (socialism)?

Or toward the ordinary citizen (democracy)?

The four reforms which Republicans emphasize in the bill are: [read more]

IN THE PREVIOUS POST WE LOOKED at three areas of the House health care reform bill, to see just how democratic they really were.

The question I posed there was how much power these proposals transferred from the large wealthy corporations to the average citizen and patient:

The first three areas were the Insurance Exchange, the Public Option, and greater supervision of the health care industry:

 

Provision	Moves Us Toward	Direction
The Insurance Exchange	Democracy, Freedom
The Public Option	Democracy, Freedom
Greater Supervision	Democracy, Freedom

The two other major areas in the bill are government subsidies, and funding.

I take those up today: [read more]

LAST TIME I POINTED OUT THAT health care reform is really about freedom and democracy, in two ways:

1. The value of any health care reform package to the average citizen should be measured, in part, by how successfully restores our power over our own health care.
   
   As things stand now, that power is vested in large insurance corporations, and generally denied to patients.
2. If health care reform succeeds in making citizens and families more secure, it will also strengthen our democracy.
   
   Anxiety and worry makes citizens less grounded and easier to manipulate—security makes it easier for them to fend for their own interests, and those of their country.

I promised that today I would begin looking at the Democratic (capital D) proposal, to see just how democratic (small d) it really is. [read more]

IN THE LAST POST I EXAMINED how the agendas for health care change when we consider ourselves—we, the people—as a center of power, alongside the government and the wealthy corporations.

But power comes in more than one form.

Imagine two different futures for America:

1. Our government becomes more and more democratic in a purely political sense—in that more and more issues get decided by the majority.
   
   At the same time the people become more intolerant.
   
   A new religion emerges, which almost completely replaces Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and all other religions now practiced.
   
   Because this is a democracy, in the political sense, the beliefs and practices of this new religion get enacted into law.
   
   The laws become completely restrictive: allowing virtually no choice to anyone. Everything about daily life must be lived in accordance with the rules of the new religion. Laws prescribe when we rise in the morning, when we go to bed at night, what we eat and when, who we marry, how many children we have, what programs we watch on television, what newspapers are allowed to print, who can get what job, where we worship—every aspect of our lives.
2. Our government becomes more and more dictatorial—no one gets to vote anymore, and a single person controls everything.
   
   This dictator puts policies into effect which allow everyone maximum freedom.
   
   He makes sure we have a healthy free market.
   
   He makes sure that everyone has equal opportunity.
   
   He makes sure that no one, not even your boss, can infringe on your basic human rights.
   
   Under this dictatorship the laws become minimally restrictive: allowing maximum choice to everyone. Everything about our daily life is left up to us. We decide when to rise in the morning, when to go to bed at night, what we eat and when, who we marry, how many children we have, what programs we watch on television, what our newspapers print, what job we want to apply for, where we worship or if we worship—every aspect of our lives.

In which of these scenarios do the people have more power? [read more]

THE LAST POST OR TWO have addressed the standard model within which health care reform is being debated.

That model is a simple continuum, with socialism on the left and capitalism on the right:

In practice, that model gives us only two choices—give the power to the wealthy, or give the power to the government:

But this model is deeply misleading, because it relegates us—we, the people—to a passive position: our only job is to cast a vote for either big government or wealth.

In fact, government and wealth are not the only two options in the field.

We, the people, do not need to be merely choosers, we can also be a choice.

We can ask, not just whether a given policy such as health care reform moves the "X" closer to wealth or the government, but whether it moves the "X" closer to us.

Does it, in this case, give us more control over our own health care?

Under the current system, the "X" is, on average, about here: [read more]

THE CONTINUUM I PLACED health care on in the previous post was a simple line, stretching from Socialism, on the left, to Capitalism on the right:

Using that model, our current health care system shows up about here:

By contrast, the Democratic plan, in either of its configurations, shows up about here:

"Obama care" is not an attempt to seriously socialize health care. It's an attempt to make a capitalist system a little more stable and a little more responsive to the people.

This can be hard to understand in the present climate because our thinking is stuck on the continuum above—but that continuum does not represent the real world.

It's meant to be a kind of map, showing where the power lies. [read more]

IN THE CASE OF HEALTH CARE reform, as in many others, the real story is in the subtext.

The battle isn't over good health care—which everybody wants.

It isn't over less expensive healthcare—which everybody wants.

It isn't over more reliable healthcare, or even over making sure everyone is covered.

The battle is not over heath care at all.

On the pure level of party politics, it's mostly about the Republicans trying to stop the Democrats from getting anything done, because they think they can win the next election that way.

But even that is not the real issue.

The real issue has to do with where the center of power in this country will be.

The usual way of framing that issue is as a choice between capitalism and socialism.

But that leaves out the largest and most interesting possibility.

We've been taught to view the power struggle on a continuum like the one below: [read more]