The Last Throes of Netroots Nation (for me anyway)

I am sitting in on a panel on health care as my last act here.  Sad to say I missed Al Gore's surprise appearance this morning and the Q&A with Speaker Pelosi.  For reports on those events you have to go to younger  bloggers who were able to get up early enough after the Daily Kos party last night.  The party was quite good by the way -- held in a bar, Maggie Mae's, with a large roof top area and featuring my two favorite words -- "open bar."  The party also featured a large video screen showing an endless loop of the dance remix of the Bill O'Reilly "fuck it we'll do it live" episode, which I can honestly say never gets old -- indeed as you approach double figures in margaritas it becomes positively hypnotically amusing.

(This panel is really compelling by the way and is well worth watching if you can -- in fact, I can't recommend it highly enough -- I intend to a do a couple of health care posts in the near future, although it is an issue that vexes and frustrates me on such a profound level that I have a hard time writing about it.)         

Well let me give you my fifty cent version of what I think about health care -- we need to blow up the fucking system and start again.  Period.  Any change that continues to rely primarily on private insurers will remain inadequate, capricious, and cost ineffective.  Elaboration to follow.

(Gail Jenkins, a nurse from the California Nurses Association just said exactly what I wrote -- without the "fucking" of course.)  "We have to eliminate the insurance companies from the equation." "We spend twice as much money as any industrialized country with some of the worst outcomes." 

She makes that sound like a bad thing.

Poor Ezra is going to be the bad guy on the panel, the only one who will not indulge in a full-throated endorsement of single payer.  He is speaking to the political logic of health care reform, as opposed to the policy arguments against single payer.  Ezra stresses that the enemy of health care reform is the U.S. Senate specifically, and politics generally.  Political failure is the watch word.  [Ezra suggests that we might want to invade France and take their health care system as an approach with bi-partisan appeal.]  His overall point is that we need to pursue the good rather than the perfect, i.e. some continuation of private insurers with significant changes as an approach to the general public's "status quo bias."  "We need to be policy pragmatists and political dogmatists."  I am very impressed by his poise and persuasiveness in facing an audience that is a little hostile.  He argues strongly for the primacy of politics over policy and I think wins at least a substantial amount of respect from the audience.  (By the way I was amused to notice yesterday that he types with only two fingers at lightning speed -- I think he put up four posts in the course of one panel.) 

The first questioner from the audience sums up my critique for this approach -- "pre-emptive surrender."  Gail Jenkins is fabulous by the way.  And she just said "enough of this shit" thereby further endearing her to me.  Ezra restates that "this is an exercise in raw political power" a sentiment that is undeniable and with which all agree.  The question remains how do we go about this exercise.         

Comments

[Trevor J]

Thanks for these reports, Sir C. Safe travels home.

I wish I didn't agree with Ezra on this, but I just don't see the mechanism for single-payer, the dynamite, if you will. How could it ever come out of Congress?

[Sir Charles]

Trevor,

Thanks.

I have a lot of respect for the position that you and Ezra support. Part of me thinks that we need to hold out for single payer nonetheless and work more patiently to build a super majority for the idea. I think much more needs to be done to cultivate the busines community to get them to see how much this is in their collective interests.

On the other hand, the failure to deliver on some kind of reform could be very damaging for Obama and the Dems.

I think the calculus behind this political equation is one on which people of good faith can differ.

[ari]

That's funny, I have no respect at all for Ezra's or Trevor's position.* Oddly, milquetoast reform (read: capitulation) for the sake of political expediency strikes me as the naive position in this case. But the Bush years have radicalized me, I guess.

* As distinct from Ezra and Trevor themselves, given that the former deserves and has my respect, and the latter I don't know.

[Sir Charles]

Ari,

You're a harsh man my friend -- I think both of them would point out that a failure to achieve some type of reform in the near term may well result in a situation such as 1994, where we end up 14 years down the road with things have gotten infinitely worse.

I don't agree but I can't dismiss it out of hand.

[Sir Charles]

By the way, did I mention that I am looking at Michelle Malkin as we speak? We appear to be on the same flight.

So just know if my flight goes down it won't be a total tragedy.

[Sir Charles]

Oh my God. Michael Steele is also on my flight. He is sitting down with Malkin as we speak. This could possibly be the worst flight of my existence. And I flew Yugoslav Airways when the country was still communist.

[Lisa Simeone]

Eeeeeek! Do you realize she lives in Towson, a suburb of Baltimore? Horrors. She takes all the charm out of Charm City whenever she sets foot in it.

[Stephen]

Why does everyone hate Michelle Malkin so much? I don't go in for her act very much, but you have to admit she's the most dedicated performance artist in the country right now.

What?

Anyway, as for single-payer, I agree with both the Ezrites and Arians. Going for less than single-payer is simply capitulation. However, even if we had a Democratic President, 415 Dem Representatives and 89 Dem Senators, they still wouldn't be able to make it happen, because the largest Democratic Congressional group is the Asshole Caucus.

The majority of the Democrats in DC don't give two shits about anything important to us.

[low-tech cyclist]

You can't agree with the Arians, Stephen - they're a bunch of heretics!

Geez, kids these days, always forgetting their medieval theology.

The majority of the Democrats in DC don't give two shits about anything important to us.

Hence my belief that we need to form a genuinely progressive political party. I don't see the day coming, anytime soon, where we have enough 'better Democrats' to actually determine the lion's share of the party's message.

[Stephen]

I didn't forget about the Arians. I just wondered how many people would get the pun.

Arianism never held much for me, even though you have to admit being the primary cause of the 1st Council of Nicaea is pretty cool. Inadvertent Nestorianism was my folly in my early days at seminary.

[Sir Charles]

See, this is why people should like the "God shit" on this blog. It's a symbol of quality.

[Corvus9]

I am with Trevor J on this. substantial political or social change really only happens in a gradual manner, and there is simply no way to jump from what we have now to single payer. I just don't see the roadmap. You have to do it by building interest over time, and creating condition that allow for the slow change in political will. I guess what I am saying is that I think that following Ezra's position is the quickest way to actually getting single-payer.

[Neil the Ethical Werewolf]

As you might guess, I'm going to stick up for the John Edwards position -- the best we can do at the present moment is to pass a good transitional plan that has the backdoor to single-payer built in.

This doesn't mean that single-payer supporters should stop talking about it or promoting it publicly. Keep doing that! Expand the Overton Window and scare the big interests into backing our position as a compromise! Just don't piss on the transitional plan too much, and be willing to accept it if it's all we can get.

[low-tech cyclist]

I agree with Neil: advocate and agitate for single-payer, and be open to the Edwards plan as a compromise. Move that window!

Stephen - I figured you'd probably snuck that one in there deliberately, and even if you didn't, you'd get the joke if someone else picked up on it.

Speaking of Nestorianism, it seems to me that any serious Christian would have to at least unconsciously adopt it when first reading the New Testament seriously. The Jesus of the Gospels and the crucified, resurrected Christ of Paul's epistles seem to have only the slightest connection to one another. Which of course makes perfect sense, since Paul didn't come to
Christ through the community of Christians who told stories of the living, breathing Jesus who'd walked the earth, and by the time he heard those stories, his beliefs - this incredible theological shockwave of Christ crucified and resurrected, therefore, therefore, therefore... - were apparently too fully-formed to absorb much from them.

[Scott K]

The Jesus of the Gospels and the crucified, resurrected Christ of Paul's epistles seem to have only the slightest connection to one another.

Well, it depends on whether you count John as a Gospel. ;-)

As far as health care reform goes, I think it is certainly useful to have advocates arguing for a single-payer system, since that helps set the parameters of the debate in a more favorable manner, but I honestly don't see it happening anytime soon. The biggest feature of a single-payer system that would help costs is the ability to control costs by, well, managing health care. However, that is the same cudgel that is frequently used to beat us senseless. I think we need to figure out some effective arguments to convince the general public that it isn't a bad thing to limit our options. Ultimately, I think that means getting people to come to peace with the fact that they're going to die one day and there isn't really anything we can do about that.