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:
Socialism sits on the left, capitalism sits on the right, and the X represents the position of any given policy.
Using that continuum, our current health care system is about here:
It's not all the way to the right, but it's pretty far. There are some pockets of government-run health care: in the military and the veteran's administration.
Social security provides government-run health insurance for some people—but the actual doctors, hospitals, nurses, drugs, and their administration and support system are all run privately.
Most of the remaining system, including insurance, is run on a capitalistic basis.
The health insurance industry even has an exemption from anti-trust laws—the ones that stop other industries from doing things like price-fixing, rigging bids, dividing up markets and other anti-competitive practices.
If you listen to the conservative propaganda, the plan advanced by the Democrats is clear at the other end of the spectrum: a "government take-over of health care".
But of course it's actually not.
Even on the seriously incomplete continuum between socialism and capitalism, the Democratic plan sits about here:
The Democratic plan limits the way that corporations can take advantage of consumers—things like denying services for trumped-up reasons.
It helps some people who couldn't otherwise afford health care.
It makes the market a little fairer, and a little more competitive.
But overall, it's a fix for a capitalistic market.
The much debated public option is only an insurance plan, not even an HMO, and is designed to be just one insurance plan among many, paying its own way.
The plan as a whole is definitely right of center, even on this continuum.
But this continuum is seriously misleading.
Next: a less misleading model...
