The Power of a Sliver

I am not a fan of Twitter -- only 140 characters allowed. Not enough. Could you imagine Plato delivering The Republic as a series of tweets? But I do have an account, with the address known to a very select few. Thus I received the following tweet from Michelle Obama: "Barack worried about his health sliver. Any suggestions?"

What Michelle was referring to was her husband's position on reforming American health care. He wanted a "sliver" of the Health Bill currently being debated by Congress to contain a public health option. This would be funded and administered by the government, and be open to all who wished to sign up. Participants would pay a pro-rated tax, and including such an option would go some distance to ensuring full health coverage for all Americans. All other plans run by insurance companies would stay operational, but they would have to compete.

This whiff of competition, of course, was viewed by the insurance companies, the HMO's and the American Medical Association much as an Orthodox Jew would view a person eating a ham sandwich at the Wailing Wall. Intense lobbying immediately ensued, and Senators began to collapse right and left. All those campaign contributions, you see.

Yet not all is lost. A recent New York Times / CBS poll indicated that 85% of Americans overwhelmingly support substantial changes to their health care system. Well, why wouldn't they? America, after all, is 37th in the world in health care success, just behind Morocco, if the WHO is anything to go by. A smaller percentage (72%) stated that the government could do a better job of holding down health care costs than the private sector.

Those opposed to the public option, if not super intelligent, are at least cunning. If a public option is part of the Bill, and is successful, then in order to compete, or even to exist, their profit-taking mind-set would have to be radically altered, and altered downwards. That, to be sure, is horror itself. Affordable drugs? Less unneeded and expensive tests? Not worth thinking about, even if savings could reach $3 trillion by 2020, as estimated by one economist in the Los Angeles Times.

So the fight will be fierce. In this regard I sent Michelle two tweets.

1) If the Bill reaches his desk with no public option, veto it.

2) Google Tommy Douglas.