SuperTuesday's Eve: The Healthcare Debate

Among liberals in my world, one problems with being unabashedly pro-Obama has arisen with particular force over the weekend: health care

On all Super Tuesday’s eve, I shall address this head on.

HEALTHCARE

A succinct attack of Obama’s health care campaign in favor of Hillary’s was put forth today by Times’ columnist Paul Krugman. Not only does her plan cost a lot less per person, apparently, but it also mandates universal coverage, that most distant of democratic stars that Clinton (and once upon a time, Edwards) now tells us is within reach. For those of you worried about Krugman's analysis, READ THIS from Harold Pollack in the Huffington Post.

In short, health care mandates mean everyone is ordered to have health insurance, either through some government program, through an employer, independently, or some combination thereof. Hillary (and Krugman) are going after Obama for not including mandates as part of his plan.

How will Hillary enforce the mandates? How do you actually force people to pay up for health care if they don't voluntarily sign up? She claims to be ready to go to the mat. Her on ABC's' “This Week”

"I think there are a number of mechanisms. Going after people's wages, automatic enrollment, when you are at the place of employment, you will be automatically enrolled, whatever the mechanism is."

Word to the wise, Hil: "going after people's wages" ain't the best soundbite you every came up with, but it's cool, soundbites aren't your thing and that's fine.

Obama’s criticism of Clinton’s plan has been two fold:

1) It’s unfair to force people to buy health care if they don’t want to (this problem is the very definition of a mandate), and

2) That plenty of people can’t afford the mandated insurance, so we’d just be adding another back-breaking bill.

As for complaint number two, Clinton's plan includes subsidies for the poor, and, if those turn out to be insufficient, a promise to up the subsidies. Whether you find it unlikely that she can pull that off in congress, you can't say that her plan is more cruel to poor people than his plan. It's not.

Krugman is right to point out that argument number one is pretty Republican. And okay, I know it sounds like I’m hating on my boy's Unity/One America thing, but I’m not. This criticism taps into something we're going to choke on if Obama becomes president and no point in pretending otherwise.

How's this for a debate question :

When Change goes up against Unity, which are you going to choose?

Or

When there isn’t common ground, who crosses over?

These notions are not cynical. They are inevitable.

There will be a serious conflict between Republicans in Washington and a Democratic-led attempt to enforce the insurance of the 50 million Americans without health care. The fear among some liberals is that Obama will do a Bill, and make nice with the conservatives instead of fighting for a better life for more Americans.

Uh, in case you missed it, I just pointed out that Hillary’s husband (whose presidency she has vociferously added to her Experience Resume) pretty much created the mold for being the overly yielding Democratic centrist. But that was a different historical moment so I’m not going to bug her about that anymore.

Yes I will. Sorry. If her “baptism by fire” (her words in the last debate) during Bill’s years was so instructive, so fucking mettle firming, how did she just get talked into Iraq by that bit of Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld theater in the senate? Plenty of colleagues saw the same show and were unconvinced. (See previous post for more wrath on that topic.)

Okay but moving on. As a soul-searching Obama supporter, the health care questions for me are:

Do I simply support him, in spite of him being to the right of Hillary's healthcare plan, because of everything else great about him, and everything else less great about her?

Or,

Do I harbor skepticism in the power of the Democrats moment right now (I do) and therefore believe that the Democrat who wins the nomination with universal health care in her plan will get chewed up in the general election and/or the White House for pushing a sweeping reform that America is just not ready for? (And if I think that, am I not just like the cynics with a shrunken political imagination whom Obama urges me to rise above?)

Or,

Do I think he’s shrewdly learning the lesson of the Clintons' health care debacle in 1994, and proposing a policy that is the closest to universal we can get right now, period? I mean, who’s going to come out and say “I’m against health care for children!”** And when those children grow up, they’ll be used to the idea of universal health care, and that’s how this change is going to come, through the coming of age of a generation of universally covered children? (I mean, it sounds good, but someone took off with my crystal ball at our Christmas party...along with my My-So-Called-Life DVD boxset.)

**(His plan insists on insurance for everyone up to age 25, and would add about 23 million of the uninsured to the ranks of the insured...that's not nothing)

I don’t know. The truth is, I have never lived a day in my life in an America with close to Universal health care.

I have also never lived to see an electorate that is ON FIRE with a presidential candidate. Until now.

I’m having a seeing-is-believing moment: the imagined possibility of a competent, seasoned Clinton pushing through universal health care is not as real to me as the people mobilized by this man to care. To really care, people.

Count me in the camp with the people who are on fire they care so much. Who are volunteering state to state for the first time in their young lives because they share a leader's vision of themselves and of our country. It's too real to deny, and for me, it's too real to vote against.

Alright, I'm so exhausted. Gay rights issue (since it's not different from Hillary, and therefore, doesn't have the same supertuesday urgency) will come tomorrow.

BARACK THE VOTE, PEOPLE!