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 Digging in the Right PlacePosted on Jan 17, 2008By David Sirota There’s a memorable moment in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” when Indiana Jones sees a rival’s archaeological excavation and realizes the buried treasure is somewhere else. “They’re digging in the wrong place!” he exclaims. The line could explain why our national elections leave us feeling empty. By expecting so much so fast from Washington, D.C., we are digging for “change” in the wrong place. Think about it: The White House can be won only by raising truckloads of cash from moneyed interests looking to preserve the status quo. Likewise, the U.S. Senate’s filibuster rules allow 41 lawmakers, representing just 11 percent of the population, to stop anything. These are institutions designed to prevent change, not embrace it. Thankfully, the same cannot be said for the “laboratories of democracy”—state legislatures. Amid pundits’ breathless analyses of Hillary Clinton’s tear ducts, these arenas quietly opened throughout America this month. And from beneath the rubble of celebrity-obsessed campaign journalism and the ruins of national political gridlock, change is being exhumed in two bellwether states. In a move making health care lobbyists quiver, Washington state Sen. Karen Keiser, a Democrat and the chairwoman of her Legislature’s powerful health committee, this week introduced the nation’s most far-reaching universal health care proposal. Her legislation is the American West’s version of a parallel Wisconsin initiative, and the replication suggests this model may begin building the universal health care system our country wants. The plan is simple: Employers and employees pay a modest payroll tax in exchange for full medical benefits, with no premiums. Patients never lose coverage and pick the doctors they prefer. And for the spendthrifts, here’s the best part: According to an analysis of the Wisconsin proposal by the nonpartisan Lewin Group, the plan would save middle-class families an annual average of $750 on their existing health care bills. In all, the state would save almost $14 billion over the next decade. Seem too good to be true? That’s because you’re used to being bilked by an insurance industry that drives up premiums, drives down benefits and gives executives like former UnitedHealth CEO William McGuire $1.6 billion worth of stock options in one year. Eliminating that greed is precisely how the Washington state and Wisconsin proposals simultaneously save money and cover everyone. Unlike the much-touted Massachusetts law forcing citizens to buy insurance from the private profiteers, the Washington and Wisconsin models pool all existing health care expenditures and then replace the middlemen with one publicly controlled, not-for-profit system. That structure attacks problems beyond the immorality of allowing 18,000 Americans to die each year because they lack health coverage. For businesses faced with crushing health care costs, the Lewin Group predicts the plan will save private-insuring employers almost $700 million a year. For politicians looking to provide economic stimulus in the face of a recession, the nonpartisan Families USA estimates the proposal’s investments will create 13,000 new jobs. Even tax reformers have something to like, as Wisconsin’s version directs much of the system’s savings into property tax relief. The Royalist Right is distraught about the plan. When an initial draft passed the Wisconsin Senate last year, The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board attacked it on the grounds that it “reduces out-of-pocket copayments” and “increases the number of mandated medical services covered” for patients. Wow. Sounds just awful. The paper then criticized it as a tax increase and labeled it “government-run”—as if patients are better served by paying even bigger premium increases to corporate CEOs whose paychecks grow with each coverage denial. The screed showed how little conservative elites care, not just for the uninsured, but for the working-class wing of the Republican Party—the roughly 40 percent of GOP voters who, according to the Pew Research Center, tell pollsters they “favor universal health coverage, even if it means higher taxes.” These voters are part of a new trans-partisan consensus—one that believes the words of the hero we remember this week. “Of all the forms of inequality,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.” Those desiring “real change” should applaud these Washington state and Wisconsin leaders confronting that injustice. Unlike the nearsighted nabobs of national politics and the adversaries of Indiana Jones, these state legislators are digging in the right place. © 2008 Creators Syndicate Inc. Elsewhere: . CommentsAre you a Truthdig member yet? Login now, or register with Truthdig. Add Your Comment
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By jackpine savage, January 20, 2008 at 8:19 am #
The comment posted by Ms. D’Oceanie gave me pause to think; furthermore, recent experiences with the Michigan State Legislature force me to concur that state and local government can be a vehicle for the bad and the ugly as much as they can work for the good.
But it all comes down to what we, the voters, put into the process. Government is like a computer: garbage in, garbage out.
We are all wrapped up tightly in the presidential horse race. We’re already yelling at each other, and the campaign is still intra-party. Americans are growing cynical and disillusioned by the process. We hear about change and hope; we hope for change, but most of us - it seems - can’t shake the nagging doubt that our hopes will be dashed. Let’s face it, they probably will be.
Realistically, we cannot hope that change will trickle down from the top. Supply side politics is about as bunk as supply side economics.
Change happens like cream: it rises from the bottom to the top. It is up to us to put our efforts into local and state elections so that the results reflect our views. And it is not a matter of libertarian, every man for himself politics. If 2/3 of the state legislatures drafted articles of impeachment, Congress would have to proceed. California’s emission standards would be harder for the EPA to stymie if twenty other states adopted them too.
Yes, state government is often as crooked and corrupt as the federal government; however, much of that is due to the fact that we don’t pay attention at the local level so local control defaults to the party apparatus. Local representatives end up pandering to the parties desires - which are overly influenced by the desires of the corporations that they suckle on - rather than responding to the will of the people that they represent.
So if we desire change; if we cling to any shred of hope for the future, then we must take matters into our own hands. Today we feel powerless, but if we go out and get involved, tomorrow will be different. You can send a check to Clinton, Obama, or Edwards. Or you can get fifty people to vote in an election where those fifty votes really count. You can put a sign in your yard for a national candidate, or you can look a local candidate in the eye and ask them hard questions.
Politicians are like peas: they’re good if you like ‘em. But they’re also like peas in that if you want a delicious meal in June, you had better cultivate them well in April.
Report thisBy jackpine savage, January 20, 2008 at 7:54 am #
Thank you for the information, Ms. D’oceanie; it is much appreciated. The best way to find out the truth is always to listen to the people who live with it.
Report thisBy julie d'oceanie, January 19, 2008 at 6:24 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
I would like to say something about the Massachusetts experience. I live in Massachusetts and can tell you that your state legislators can stab you in the back just as well as your federal representatives.
In the 90’s we had an excellent health care system in Massachusetts. If you weren’t covered by an employer, you could get coverage through MassHealth, and if your income was within 200% of the poverty line it was free.
In 2001, after GWB come into office under regrettable and peculiar circumstances, one of his first acts was to dispatch our governor to Ottawa to be the ambassador to Canada. The lt. governor succeeded to the governorship and, as she was preoccupied with her newborn twins, she stepped aside when Mitt Romney blew into town from Utah and scooped up the Republican nomination for governor in 2002. (This required a special ruling from our state supreme court holding that this particular guy from Utah could run to be governor of Massachusetts—much like GWB needed a special ruling from the US supreme court to halt the vote count in Florida in order to be president. But I digress…)
The democratic candidate for governor in 2002 was someone no one had ever heard of, and Mitt had better hair, so, of course, he won. One of the first things he did was to take away the health coverage of 54,000 people. People said that that was not very nice and that it was mean to take medication and health care away from people less fortunate than themselves, etc., but in the end, people who have health insurance did not go to bat for people who didn’t have it. Why should they?
Anyway, after Mitt had dismantled our perfectly good health care system, he proposed his plan. It contained an unbelievable new idea, that people would be forced to buy health insurance. Opposition, however, to Mitt’s plan was weak and the plan was enthusiastically adopted by the DEMOCRATIC legislature a couple of years ago.
I cannot think of a more unAmerican idea: that an individual should be forced by the state to enter into a contract with a private corporation. It’s unprecedented. But I digress again…
I want to say that, despite what you might hear in the media about Mitt bringing universal health care to Massachusetts, things are not going well. People are refusing to shell out hundreds of dollars a month for a “loser policy” in order to comply with the new law, because it’s expensive to live in Massachusetts and people just don’t have the money. Talk to people affected by this issue and you will hear outrage.
On January 1 of this year, citizens of Massachusetts who had not yet signed a contract with an insurance company became criminals and will pay penalties. It remains to be seen how all this will play out.
The lesson that I have learned is that even if your state legislature has adopted a health care system that works and is fair, there’s no reason to believe it will last. The insurance lobby is too powerful and will work tirelessly to get rid of it.
Report thisBy larry brandes, January 18, 2008 at 9:12 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
The reason that states have so much potential is really quite simple. The state legislatures are made up of working people. The CFR and the TRilateral Commission and the cooperate nomes don’t reach the saturation levels out in the hinterlands as they do in New York and Washington. However, be warned, if more states start doing the right thing for the people, the pressures from ‘the DC corruption league’ will be at every state capital door step.
Report thisBy jackpine savage, January 18, 2008 at 7:57 am #
How many times can i breathlessly repeat the word, “yes”? Not enough times, really.
I long for the day when States can do what’s best for their citizens, overseen - not dictated - by the federal government. No, i’m not some Paulist libertarian, just someone who believes in a healthy amount of decentralization. And it is because i feel as though i can actually have an impact at more local levels.
My state rep. needs to listen to me because i can tell everyone i know that he’s being a jackass and it will have some effect. My Congressional rep. will pretty much ignore me if i’m not ponying up for $1000/plate dinners.
So cheers to Oregon, Wisconsin, and David Sirota. Vote well, vote often, and vote locally…
Report thisBy Douglas Chalmers, January 17, 2008 at 10:51 pm #
“Those desiring “real change” should applaud these Washington and Wisconsin leaders confronting that injustice. Unlike the nearsighted nabobs of national politics…”
Right! We’re surreptitiously back to the Edwards/Obama agenda and slagging Hillary (David Sirota’s blog), uhh. Another preciously conceited covert sexist…...
Nevertheless, state legislatures have already been vehicles of change by default as the federal administration failed to address any of either the consequences of hurricane Katrina, etc etc, or the failing infrastructure or the implications of climate change ot the green power revolution in electricity or structural unemployment.
Of course, health is yet another one of those issues and “Of all the forms of inequality,... injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane” (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.) and white people suffer as well as Asians and Hispanics and African-American and….....
2,500 years ago, Confucius said: ‘If you rule the people and keep order among them by punishments . . . they may avoid doing what is wrong, but they will also lose self respect. If you guide the people by moral force and keep order among them by ritual, they will keep their self respect and come to you of their own accord’!
There is really nothing new under the Sun, so to speak, and he and his followers had a lot to say about medical ethics, too. http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-MDL/guo.htm
“In Five Commandments and Ten Tenets for Physicians, Chen Shigong also asked physicians to practise medicine with integrity: they should not replace precious herbal materials provided by the family of the patients with inferior ones, nor charge the poor, and wandering monks. And what is more, he urged physicians to give as much financial support as possible to poverty-stricken patients, for he believed that no medicine could cure any person with an empty stomach. He also suggested that physicians should not be extravagant but should live simply. He held that it was much better to save money than to charge more fees….”
Report thisBy Joe, January 17, 2008 at 10:20 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
Great article on the preferred place for innovation and renewed government: our State Legislatures and Governors. Sirota gets it.
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