The Public Education Analogy for Healthcare

In the raging healthcare debate that currently dominates the American news cycle, it seems like everybody has an analogy that they claim proves or disproves the future viability of the as yet unformed healthcare reform legislation. Republican/conservative fearmongers compare it to socialism (Soviet, not Swedish). Over on the left, Democrats, scrambling to find some type of purchase in the painfully thin topsoil that is America's collective attention span, can't really compare it to anything substantive because they haven't yet decided how much they're going to give up in the face of Republican obstinance, although they have made weak efforts to point out that their various plans are similar in various ways to various existing programs like Medicare and the VA.

In all fairness to the American public, you can't really blame them for buying the Republican bullshit, because at least it's something to buy. The Democrats talked a big game about single-payer universal coverage (without explaining it to people) before the election, but quickly jettisoned that idea as soon as Max Baucus and Kent Conrad got their campaign checks from the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries. Then they babbled about the public option (again, without clearly explaining it to Ma and Pa Kettle), half-heartedly flung co-ops against the wall to see if they would stick (what is a co-op you ask? Exactly!), and now are mumbling stuff about pasting a few legislative band-aids on the suppurating wound of American healthcare.

The frustrating thing is, the Republicans couldn't care less about the plight of the "mythical little people." The Democrats are the ones who push legislation and policy that benefits society rather than the individual or the corporation, and in a country of 300 million people, logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one. In the words of George Costanza, "we're living in a society here!"

The Dems are responsible for some of the most important social legislation in history, from the Social Security Act to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to the Americans with Disabilities Act to Title IX, but these days, they seem unable to make the case for healthcare reform or anything else to the American people.

Republicans are great at coming up with neat little Goebbels-like slogans that reduce complex, subtle, critically important policy debates down to bumper-sticker slogans. From "the Moral Majority" to "Contract with America" to "entitlement programs" to "the death tax" to "socialized medicine" to "death panels" and now "the death book," Frank Luntz, Karl Rove, and the rest of the sinister Republican brain trust have got distracting abstraction down to a science.

It works for them because Americans don't want to "read the bill," they want the Cliff's Notes version. The shorter the better, and bonus points if it has a touch of snark to it, too. Democrats, weak-kneed and conviction-challenged as they are, hem and haw about the fine details of policy, nibbling off arcane portions of legislation and then trying to sell them to the American people as legitimate game-changers. Most of the time, most Americans don't know what the Democrats are trying to argue, what their positions are, how the proposed legislation would affect them, or why something needs to change. It's much simpler for the public to absorb a bold, confident, 30-second Republican sound bite than it is to try to figure out what the hell John Kerry just spent seven minutes and 15 appositive clauses trying to say.

This is one reason why the public doesn't buy the Democratic spiel, and frankly, Page A-26 can't blame them. To help the Democrats find their way out of the rhetorical paper bag in which they're currently lost in the healthcare debate, Page A-26 offers two helping hands.

First, a five-word bumper sticker slogan. "Universal healthcare -- for everybody's future"

Second, a simple analogy for single-payer universal health care or the public option. The public education system.

Republicans/conservatives and their town holler proxies are all bent out of shape about universal healthcare and/or the public option for a variety of disingenuous reasons. Oh sure, some of the more undereducated town hollers might actually believe that universal healthcare or the public option would result in rationed care or whacking grandma for the fun of it or socialized medicine (uh, you mean like the VA, hoss? Yes, my little mental midget, just like the VA), but the puppetmasters pulling the strings know that these reasons are just distracting flak thrown into the public discourse to confuse and mislead.

One of the favorite warhorses that Republican leaders trot out in opposition of universal healthcare or even a public option is that such a plan will drive private health insurance companies out of business because they won't be able to compete with the government's economy of scale. (Let's just suspend for the time being the counterargument these same Republican leaders spew out of the other side of their mouths: that a government-managed system would be horribly inefficient and ineffective.) Because the government would be able to offer better coverage at a lower price, reasonable Americans would abandon their overpriced, undercovering private health insurance for the public option. Alas, the poor private health insurance companies, how will they ever survive?

If only there was an example of an existing system in which a critical service was provided to the American public concurrently by the government and the private sector. If only.

Ah, but wait, there is. It's called the American educational system. First sketched out in the Northwest Ordinances of 1785 and 1787, the public education system in the United States is one of the most beneficial and successful systems in the history of the world. Using tax revenue, the federal government, in conjunction with local governments and municipalities provides free education to anybody who wants to attend. And right alongside the universal single-payer government-run, socialized public education system hums a vast network of highly successful and profitable private education institutions.

Just like it would be for universal single-payer healthcare, Americans right now, today! have the right and the opportunity to send their kids to whatever school they want. Parents can choose to send their kids to tuition-free public school or they can choose to send them to private schools for a fee. It's entirely their choice. The government doesn't force them into either option, but it does make an option available for those who cannot afford the high cost of private schools or for those who simply choose to participate in the shared experience that is American society.

So there it is Democratic leaders, your ready-made, easy-to-understand analogy for universal single-payer healthcare, or at least the public option.

One last thing about the public education-universal healthcare analogy. Republicans have been trying for years to get rid of America's public education system. From attempts to dissolve the Department of Education to private school vouchers to unnecessary tax cuts that intentionally leave no money remaining for public services like education, the Republicans/conservatives are hell-bent on privatizing one of the shining lights of American history and American government.

This is an important point, because the Republicans would like to privatize everything, including Social Security, the armed forces, and even the Post Office. Why? Because corporations don't profit from government services, unless they're the ones providing them. So with regard to Republicans/conservatives, the healthcare debate is really about profit and greed, not what's best for individual Americans or America as a whole.

That's one more simple message the Democrats should be trying to make clear to the American public.