Stay First-Order on Health Care
I made this point at a few seemingly key junctures during the Presidential campaign, so to return to the theme whatever questions there may be about what actions will or will not help produce comprehensive health care reform we can be fairly certain that a lot of meta-commentary from the country’s most articulate progressive voices is not going to help. Nor will Monday-morning quarterbacking. If there’s an argument about health care reform that you think more people need to hear, then make the argument don’t argue about how other people should be making the argument.
It’s difficult, of course, to critique the impulse to “go meta” without falling prey to accusations of going double meta. But I don’t think people should start criticizing communications strategy until they’ve actually exhausted the ways in which they can personally make a valuable contribution. Have you told people about the eightfold path of consumer protection included in all the draft bills on the Hill? Contacted your congressman and senators? Urged your friends and family to do so? Written letters to the editor of your local paper complaining about bad editorials?
Have you discussed the proposals with coworkers, heard what concerns they might have, and cleared up any misapprehensions? Disinformation is hard to beat back, and everyone in life knows somebody who’s misinformed about something. And there are always more calls to be made and more letters to write.
20 Responses to “Stay First-Order on Health Care”
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July 31st, 2009 at 1:05 pm
everyone in life knows somebody who’s misinformed about something.
In fact, virtually everyone I know is tragically misinformed about almost everything. I do my best to set them straight, but it is a difficult and thankless task.
July 31st, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Yes, you could start by being honest and stating that the public option is really a backdoor way to achieve a single-payer system. But I won’t hold my breath.
July 31st, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Yes, it is very realistic to expect your tiny blog audience to go out and push for healthcare. I am sure 10,000 people chatting up the people they know (and probably already agree with them) will make healthcare happen. God knows it makes no sense to expect politicians or journalists to actually try and inform people or do something other than sit on their asses and take bribes.
This plan might not be so laughable if there was any chance that our elected representatives actually gave a damn what voters think.
July 31st, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Point well taken.
Although, I do plan on going triple meta if you try to slip in some double meta, which basically you just did. Escalation!
July 31st, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Okay everybody, let’s practice. If I go Aleph One-meta, can the resulting aneurysm result in my being denied or dropped from coverage?
July 31st, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Although, I do plan on going triple meta if you try to slip in some double meta, which basically you just did. Escalation!
If you go triple meta, I will be forced to go “Omega Meta,” a rhetorical “doomsday weapon” in which the entire discussion collapses into a singularity centered around my navel.
July 31st, 2009 at 1:55 pm
James Gary
Innie or outie?
July 31st, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Yes, you could start by being honest and stating that the public option is really a backdoor way to achieve a single-payer system. But I won’t hold my breath.
I’ve told dozens of people this in my life, as well as countless multitudes on the blogs. And they all seem really happy about it!
July 31st, 2009 at 2:11 pm
I’ve told dozens of people this in my life, as well as countless multitudes on the blogs. And they all seem really happy about it!
Congratulations, you’re more honest than the POTUS and half the congress.
July 31st, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Some of us have said so. I don’t think it’s anything insidious. A strong public option is a good idea on its own. It will almost certainly lead to a single payer system, which is a better idea. The accusations about this are based on the fact that a public plan will be so much better than the alternatives that the alternatives disappear, leaving us with single payer. When you make this accusation, you are proclaiming how good an idea a public plan is.
July 31st, 2009 at 2:20 pm
“Yes, you could start by being honest and stating that the public option is really a backdoor way to achieve a single-payer system.”
For me, the public option is an end in itself. If it turns into a single payer plan, that just means the private companies couldn’t compete. That’s how markets work. Inefficient companies fail. If you believe that’s what will happen, then you don’t have much confidence in private insurers, do you?
If I wanted to get to a single payer plan, I’d force everyone into the individual private market first. Anyone who has been in that nightmare will gladly accept a single payer plan to get out of it. Basically, I’d advocate for Jim DeMint’s plan. It will destroy the health care system so badly that single payer will be the only option left.
July 31st, 2009 at 2:29 pm
I think what Matt is trying to say here is to stay focused and not become an inadvertent opponent of reform by slipping into niggling criticisms. But he’s missing the big problem here.
The problem is that we don’t know whether what is coming out of the sausage-machine is an entitlement or a bamboozlement. This could be real reform, or it could be what it increasingly appears to be- an effort to kick the can a few years down the road.
And real reform advocates don’t want “reform” associated with a bamboozlement. Talk about things that will make real reform hard to achieve!
Just as prominent national bloggers only have certain forms of influence, so ordinary citizens only have certain different forms of influence. But one of our new forms of influence is to influence prominent national bloggers, who can reach readers without needing to get past a reactionary editor at a dead-tree daily. In fact, we even have a shot at influencing that blogger’s audience through the comments section.
When we’re sure what the product is, we can decide whether to push it or pan it. Right now, though, all we can do is say what we think it should be.
July 31st, 2009 at 2:35 pm
I watched Rep. Weiner last night on CSPAN3–it was a work of art. Ol’ sluggo Barker was barking.
I called Rep. Weiner’s office this morning and told the young male staffer to be SURE to tell the Rep that he has a new 61 year old girlfriend in the middle of Oklahoma, and that she’d like to marry him and take his last name. The staffer cracked right up and promised heartily to tell Mr. Weiner.
July 31st, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Helena Weiner?
July 31st, 2009 at 3:01 pm
The accusations about this are based on the fact that a public plan will be so much better than the alternatives that the alternatives disappear, leaving us with single payer.
No, not better, but so heavily subsidized by the govt. that then private companies can’t compete. Which then private companies will dump their employees into the plan, which makes the whole “you can keep your insurance or your doctor if you like them” idea a blatant misrepresentation of the facts.
July 31st, 2009 at 3:37 pm
I agree.
I actually think that people who criticize framing should set up a website and write what they think should be said. It can’t hurt, and it certainly could help.
Overall, I think health care reform is far healthier than the media makes it out to be. There is a lot of misinformation about it, and there is a lot of “Obama is struggling” stories, but the press has been itchy to write in that frame for a while.
The reality is that what the public doesn’t like–and has never liked–is the Congressional law-making process. Once a bill is passed and explained, the public will largely support it. And then will get meta analysis from guys like Brooks and Broder entitled “Why were the people I talked to at the mythical Applebee’s salad bar wrong.”
July 31st, 2009 at 3:46 pm
@12 serial catowner
I agree. I don’t want bamboozlement.
Matt wants me to contact my Congressman. No need. He is in favor of single-payer. My Senators? Chuck Schumer is for single-payer, or used to be, before he got religion, the religion of “we can’t get single-payer, how ’bout a weak public option?” So I consider Schumer to be the best of the best. No need to talk to him. My other Senator, what’s her name, has disappeared.
I talk to average folk all the time about health care. Most average joe’s think the VA is where people go to get slaughtered, then butchered. Many think Obama is a snake-oil salesman from Kenya. I engage in fruitful, if short, political conversations with these people. Fruitful in the sense that no jab combinations have been exchanged.
No, the best way, I think, to create a ripple in a pond is to try to influence someone who is way more influential than you. Especially when there seems to be a remote possibility that you have half of one of their ears. So I am going to keep on chucking rocks into Matt’s pond, until he kicks me off his property.
Besides, I like Matt. He seems to be a fine, if occasionally, testy, fellow.
July 31st, 2009 at 4:17 pm
It isn’t a question of either/or. The correct approach is ‘yes, and’.
I volunteered with two campaigns last year, the No on 8 campaign here in California, and Obama (both primary and general). The contrast was striking. The No on 8 campaign was obsessed with putting out a uniform message. We had scripts for phonebanking. We had monitors. We had big ‘events’, which mainly consisted of standing around at busy intersections holding signs. Part of the messaging obsession was a fear of offending people who weren’t comfortable talking about LGBT issues. HELLO! It was an LGBT issue, although you really wouldn’t know that from most of the campaign materials.
Phonebanking for Obama was a different world. “You know why you’re supporting Barack. Talk to them about that, about what you’re passionate about. Make a connection.” Nothing else, no rules (except no bashing of opponents). Meanwhile, the national campaign had pretty famous message discipline for the official campaign spokesfolks. In other words, it pretty much worked the way Matt is suggesting ‘we’ approach healthcare reform.
(and to address one “Yes, but it’s different” argument: Do you really think that, all other things being equal, a LGBT rights proposition in California was inherently more controversial than the idea of the first African-American President was in some regions of the country where he ended up winning?)
I would add another suggestion for when we talk to people directly. Embrace your Inner Dork. Matt’s readers are generally (except for the trolls, of course) much more sophisticated, informed, thoughtful and, dare I say, intelligent than average. The danger of that is that it’s easy to get preachy when talking to people who… aren’t. We don’t need to get bogged down in details, other than to refute misinformation. But why are we passionate about it? Is it the notion that health care is really a civil rights issue? That human health is something too important to risk trusting to the profit motive? Let yourself be emotional.
My Official Obama/Biden Election Night t-shirt (damn, those guys were brilliant at marketing crap to their supporters) has the saying on it about “One Voice can change a room… can change a city.. etc etc … change the World” Hokey.As.Hell. Except… that’s kinda what happened.
August 1st, 2009 at 8:10 am
Matt is basically trying to tell people to STFU and get behind the President. Even if you don’t agree with him. Even if you don’t think this bill is worth the effort to pass.
Like it or not, there are a lot of people adamantly against this compromise. It’s very telling that the only people who ever get pressures by Washington types like Matt are those to the left of them. That’s just not going to happen this time.
This isn’t healthcare reform. This is a baillout for insurance companies. It’s no shock Matt supports it, just as he has supported every other Ballout not going to American workers.
August 1st, 2009 at 9:57 pm
These politicians voted Against the Nathan Deal Amendment, that would Prevent Health Care Benefits to Illegal Aliens. Simply put–it’s not their BLOODY MONEY! So what! Do they care if taxpayers have to foot the behemoth bill, for anybody who snubs our laws and enters a sovereign country called America? The nationwide parasites are –CHEAP LABOR–businesses who could care less, because they pile up enormous profits. The corporate hierarchy have been having a field day–FOR DECADES. A foreign national gets hurt, their service manager or whoever the underling is, drives the maimed person and relinquishes any responsibility by dumping them on the emergency hospital entranceway. BINGO! nothing to pay!
Perhaps Americans should find some old shoddy clothes, no shave, no haircut and enter every emergency room in our country in the millions? Speak a lot of gibberish and carry no identification with a small splinter in their finger, a touch of a fever or any minor condition. By federal law the hospital will have an emergency on a–EMERGENCY. I am afraid Americans have been Lemmings going over a proverbial cliff, since who knows when? We just keep paying and paying even more to the IRS, to support–ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS. Try getting free health care in any other country, other than societies in the European Union? A FAT CHANCE! We are literary being taxed to death, to give welfare to the business overlords. These legislators have already tried to weaken E-Verify, local police action 287(g) and now unwinding the 1986 Simpson/Mazzoli enforcement law–which worked, but again was never enforced.
Even our Democrats who are trying to engineer health care for every American—INCLUDED 20 PLUS ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS AND THEIR LARGE FAMILIES. Here are 29 Judas Iscariot’s, who sold the American people out–for a lot more than 13 pieces of silver? HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS EVERY YEAR. Capps (D-CA), Eshoo (D-CA), Harman (D-CA), Matsui (D-CA), McNerney (D-CA), Waxman (D-CA), DeGette (D-CO), Murphy (D-CT), Castor (D-FL), Rush (D-IL), Schakowsky (D-IL), Braley (D-IA), Sarbanes (D-MD), Markey (D-MA), Dingell (D-MI), Stupak (D-MI), Pallone (D-NJ), Weiner (D-NY), Butterfield (D-NC), Space (D-OH), Sutton (D-OH), Doyle (D-PA), Gordon (D-TN), Gonzalez (D-TX), Green (D-TX),Welch (D-VT), Christensen (D-VI), Inslee (D-WA) and Baldwin (D-WI). I’m afraid I would be banned if I used the right epithet, when leaving a comment for these so called lawmakers?
These are the betrayers of–ALL–taxpayers. These 29 traitors gave illegal immigrants the right to pilfer your billfold and purse, while they sit in their Washington office collecting their 6 figure salaries. REMEMBER THEM AND THROW THEM OUT! DEMAND NO AMNESTY! NO FAMILY UNIFICATION KNOWN AS CHAIN MIGRATION! BUILD THE ORIGINAL FENCE! NO MORE HEALTH CARE OR ANY OTHER KIND OF BENEFITS FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS. CLOSE THE BORDER AND STATION THE NATIONAL GUARD. $2.5 TRILLION DOLLARS, JUST IN RETIREMENT BENEFITS? Learn uncorrupted facts at NUMBERSUSA. For myself and family! I am for any health care re-organization, as long as it doesn’t smell of copious profiteering and corruption, like the majority of private insurers do?
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