EDITORIAL: Is it healthcare reform or socialism?

By Matt Brabb
Mogollon Connection Editor

(Editors note: Though this piece is in the slot normally used to convey the opinions expressed by the Mogollon Connection, the following is meant to express the opinion solely of the editor.)
By Matt Brabb
Connection Editor

Driving to the office today, I saw several people with signs on the corner of 87 and 260 protesting recent actions taken by the U.S. Congress and the president. Signs that said things like “The U.S. is not a socialist country.”

I got to thinking -- how has it come to this? What has caused people to become so angry, frightened, or both, that they feel compelled to picket in the streets, warning their neighbors about the perceived threat. What motivates them?

Full disclosure time. I’m about to do something that will be pretty unpopular in these parts; I’m going to defend the recently enacted healthcare insurance reform bill. But more than that, I want to explore why this issue, of all issues, has become so toxic to opponents of the measure.

Does anyone remember this level of outrage when democrats tried this in 1993? I don’t. Then, detractors didn’t march in public, lamenting the inevitable transformation of America into a socialist state if health care reform were to pass.

Merriam-Webster defines socialism as: "any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods."

Is that really what happened here? I can see making that case if a public option had been a part of the bill, but it wasn’t. Private insurance companies will benefit to the tune of upwards of 30 million new customers because of this legislation. They fought it tooth and nail anyway, because people with pre-existing conditions can no longer be turned away, and lifetime benefit caps have been eliminated, but make no mistake, in four years when the reform finally begins they will have substantially added to their customer base.

And these new customers are for the most part the kind of customers insurance companies want. Most of the uninsured in this country are young and in relative good health. They cost insurance companies far less than the elder population, who already have a “public option” in Medicare.

One thing that has been truly astounding about the fight over health care reform and a public option has been the number of people who enjoy the public option of Medicare, who have berated the possibility of the creation of a new one by labeling it socialism. I’ve often wondered if these people also see the U.S. Postal Service and the public school system as examples of socialism.

Critics of the bill have said that insurance companies will go out of business because people will wait until they get sick to buy insurance; accepting the fines that result from failing to get covered.

Really? Did the auto insurance companies go out of business when automobile insurance became mandatory? And for that matter, when the government made auto insurance mandatory did people fret about a socialist takeover?

The average American’s resistance to an excess of government involvement in his or her personal life is a sound principle, and should be wholly supported when actually threatened. Unfortunately, it can manifest itself at the most bewildering times.

The previous administration overturned a long-standing policy that required the government to get a warrant before using a wiretap to listen in on the conversations of U.S. citizens. They argued that U.S. citizens could be labeled enemy combatants, and be incarcerated indefinitely without a trial.

Jose Padilla, an American citizen, was held for three and a half years before adjudication. Padilla is no doubt a dirt bag, and was quickly convicted when finally given a trial, but that is not the point. If the government can hold him for over three years without giving him his day in court- they can do it to you too.

Both policies have largely now been reversed; in fact, to his credit, President Bush voluntarily ended both with regard to U.S. citizens. But that is not the point.

Where were the tea parties then? Where was the outrage from the right? Is it not reasonable to argue that challenges to the rights of Americans with regard to warrants and habeas corpus are more compelling than the effort to get 31 million uninsured Americans covered?

And that is really the strange thing to me. I listen to the radio programs of Rush, Glenn, and Sean (last names not needed for identification of course). They have criticized health care reform unfailingly for the better part of the past year. They speak of death panels and the like (utter nonsense if one has bothered to read the bill). When not talking about health care, they periodically rail against cap and trade, climate change, and new regulations on the financial industry.

It is curious how those happen to be the issues that most effect the bottom lines of large and powerful corporations in this country. I’m sure that’s just a coincidence though.

Only rarely do they speak on topics like abortion, the movement to secularize America, pornography, gay marriage, school prayer, or capital punishment. All of these issues have been important to conservatives in the past, but have taken a backseat to the issues noted above, the cases in which big money, and the potential loss thereof, is involved.

To be sure, conservative commentators pay lip service to issues like abortion and gay marriage, but they don’t spend months talking about them. They don’t, for instance, argue that the Republic will be in peril if Roe V. Wade isn’t overturned like they do when talking about health care reform or cap and trade.

The thing is, I’m pretty sure that abortion is a bigger issue to most conservatives. Some 50 million abortions have been performed in American since 1973, over 3,000 every day. Can I get a conservative to argue with me that those numbers aren’t more important than the effort to insure all Americans? Still, they’re not enough to inspire a tea party movement. Not reason enough to picket on the corner of 87 and 260. I was at Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick’s appearance at Safeway last fall; there was a lot of anger over healthcare reform. Not much else.

Two congressional elections and one presidential contest will occur before most of the reforms in this bill are enforced. That means several opportunities will be available to American voters to choose representatives who will pledge to repeal universal health care.

To date, no western democracy has chosen to do so, but Americans have been known to buck a trend.