Now that the controversy over President Obama's remarks about whether or not we have a public option have mostly run their course, thankfully including the backtracking that our "left of left" dedication to this issue made necessary, I want to look at the question and initial response that lead up to this now infamous several second sound bite from hell. Because the lead-up was even worse.
Debate is a wonderful tool to participate in, many of us do it here every day. But each debate needs to take place in an appropriate forum, and our President has not always been appropriate in his choices. A debate over how to defeat health care reform does not belong on Kos, and a debate over the competitive strategies of privately run corporations does not belong in the public policy arena, or at a town hall meeting with our President.
With thanks to Monday's The Daily Show, here's the question put to President Obama by Zack Lane, a student at the University of Colorado in Boulder or, as Jon Stewart described him, "guy who goes to publicly funded state college":
"How in the world can a private corporation providing insurance compete with an entity that does not have to worry about making a profit, doesn't have to pay local property taxes..."
The response from President Obama, emphasis mine:
"This is a legitimate debate to have.
All I'm saying is though, that, the public option, whether we have it or we don't have it, is not the entirety of health care reform. This is just one sliver of it, one aspect of it."
Though it was right for us to question what was the real meaning of the "whether" part of that response, considering the basis of the question I have far more concern over the first part - the part that speaks to the competitive health of corporations, rather than to the health of Americans. And I must conclude that,
No, Mr. President, this is NOT a legitimate debate to have! Not us, not here, not now.
Not only is this not a legitimate debate for the public policy arena, it is a debate which pollutes our discussion about what is right for the American people with a deference for what is financially advantageous for a profit-driven, privately managed industry. It is a debate which belongs in board rooms and investors' meetings, not in town hall meetings between the leaders and the constituents of our government. After all, don't corporations normally display a preference to be kept out of public debate?
This illegitimate debate over corporate competitiveness is not just at the heart of what is distracting our elected leaders from the needs of those who elected them, it IS the heart of that distraction - the heart which pumps 1.4 million dollars a day of corporate lobbyist poison into the body politic, contaminating our democratic principles with a staged debate in which right is forced to try to reason with might.
I have left out the customary source links in this diary because in the legitimate debate we should be having, we are way beyond the fact-checking and myth debunking. We know the sides and the scores and each side's sponsorship. We are left now just with questions which cannot be answered through referencing outside sources, but only with self-examination.
And I'm talking to you, Mr. President.
Why, Mr. President? Why would it be legitimate for my government to participate in a debate over the competitive viability of a private insurance corporation?
Why would you willingly have us engage in a debate for which the resolution could only possibly favor the status-quo of profit driving policy, after having promised us change? Wasn't it your idea to promise to bring us systematic reform, and consign your Presidential aspirations to that promise?
Isn't it the responsibility of the insurance industry and its shareholders to determine on their own their strategy to compete, rather than just buy their way into a public policy debate?
Mr. President, it was discouraging that you would consider the public option merely "one sliver" in the composition of health care reform. But it is far more significant why you would even consider removing that sliver, and breaking your promise to the American people who supported you on the basis of that promise.
Mr. President, we won't allow the greed of the health insurance industry to dictate which is the legitimate debate for us. Your debate and our debate is about the needs and the rights of Americans for fair access to quality health care, and that private insurance options have long since failed us is no longer debatable.
Your business is to lead us to effective reform, and theirs is now to follow.