I saw the comedian Lewis Black perform a while ago. Great show. At one point he made the observation that the Democrats have no ideas, while the Republicans have bad ideas. I think that basically he's right. And that's why the Democrats have been on a losing trend for years. The Republican Party might be run by assholes, but by God, they're imaginative assholes.
The Big Idea after the jump...
Democrats have been thinking too small. It's time for some bold ideas. And I'm not talking about symbolism, I'm talking about concrete initiatives that promise to broadly improve our society as a whole. Neither throwing symbolic bones to their disparate constituencies, nor co-opting the issues of the Republicans can possibly reverse their momentum over the long term.
In my opinion, the most bamboozled constituency in America consists of the small businessman and small farmer. They're bound to the Republican party by empty rhetoric and get nothing for their loyalty but a poke in the eye. They are ripe for poaching by the Democrats. And pandering to socially conservative or fiscally libertarian ideology is not what I'm talking about. That wouldn't work, anyway, and would only alienate the base. They need offer them something that will actually help their bottom line.
So I come to the point: Single payer health insurance is the issue that would pry off a loyal Republican constituency and bind a coalition stretching from the left to the broad center within the Democratic party without sacrificing core principles.
Since the health care debacle of the early Clinton administration, this subject has been seen as poison for Democrats. But just because it wasn't done right last time doesn't mean that it shouldn't be done at all.
Think for a moment about all the constituencies who are ill served by the current system: small businessmen, employees of small businesses and freelancers (without a large pool buying into a health plan, they're lucky if they can get one at all, much less an affordable one); small farmers (same problems as above, but add in the scarcity of medical facilities in rural America which becomes worse as doctors can't make ends meet); middle class homeowners (in 2001, medical bills were found to be the cause of almost half the bankruptcies in the country, and the trend looks like its getting worse); service-workers and young workers (waiters, part-time retail, etc. -- not known for their great health plans); the elderly (we've heard all about the cost of their drugs lately); the chronically sick and the poor (obviously).
Groups that seem to have mixed results under the current system include: Organized labor and white collar professionals (most have health insurance benefits for now, although this is being steadily eroded); doctors (most seem to hate the current system, though some defend it, and many are more frightened of the devil they don't know) and large corporations (whose comparatively generous health benefits give them a hiring and retention advantage over smaller businesses, but who I imagine would not mind getting rid of the headache of the health care bureaucracy).
The only groups that seem to really benefit from the status quo are health insurance companies, pharmaceutical giants, and for-profit hospitals.
In addition to benefiting large cross-sections of the public while concretely harming only a small and unsympathetic few, a fearless defense of this policy would highlight the difference between Democratic support for small business and Republican support for big business crony capitalism.
Absolutely nothing is more American than starting your own business. So why do we discourage it? Americans today are held hostage to corporate jobs by their health benefits. Democrats need to frame support for a single payer health care system as the litmus test for support of small business and the entrepreneurial spirit in America. Just imagine the entrepreneurial engine that could be unleashed in this country if no one had to worry about what would happen if their kids got sick without their corporate health insurance.
Of course the Republicans will scream "Tax and spend!" Republicans always talk about taxes putting a brake on the economy, and squelching the entrepreneurial motivation in this country. Even if we were to accept the premise that this were true in general (for my views on this, you can look here), a tax to support single payer health care would clearly be an exception. Not only for the reasons that I've already mentioned, but also because the tax would be more than offset by the amount that we as a nation currently pay for insurance and health care. In essence, this would actually be a tax reduction.
Democrats need to stop trying to nibble away at this cancer on our economy and our society in bits and pieces. They need to stop being afraid of big ideas. They need to remember that fortune favors the bold.
Originally posted here