"Why the health care bill is the greatest social achievement of our time." (Chait)

[jefferson_dem]

Why the health care bill is the greatest social achievement of our time.
Jonathan Chait
December 24, 2009 | 12:00 am

American liberals have a habit of withdrawing into cynicism and ennui at the most inopportune moments. The 2000 presidential election, and subsequent recount, was one such moment. The most die-hard reaches of the left, deeming the Democratic Party hopelessly corrupt, rallied to Ralph Nader’s fulsome populist denunciation of Al Gore’s subservience to the corporate agenda. Among more moderate quarters, an attitude of wry detachment prevailed. (“G.O.P.-lite, Democrat-lite,” sighed <1> Frank Rich, “For the 95 percent of the country unwilling to go for Ralph Nader or Pat Buchanan, that is the choice, it always has been the choice, and it will still be the choice on Nov. 7.”) Those liberals who did see something large at stake took on an almost apologetic tone, conceding the lack of any inspired positive choice and focusing instead on the dangers of Bush.

The right, meanwhile, was engulfed in passion that occasionally flared into rage. Mobs of chanting conservatives harassed Gore at his residence day after day. Another such mob intimidated Miami canvassers into abandoning a recount then seen as potentially decisive. The left met all this with a shrug.)

<SNIP>

The first thing reform does is make insurance affordable for people who currently can’t buy it. Why can’t people afford insurance now? Well, either they don’t get it through work and can’t afford a regular insurance plan (say, a cashier at Wal Mart who doesn’t get insurance through her job) or they have a preexisting condition which means no insurer will sell them a regular insurance plan (say, a diabetic who can’t get insurance on the individual market.) Or sometimes both (a diabetic Wal Mart cashier, perhaps.)

Health reform solves the affordability problem by subsidizing insurance coverage, or expanding Medicaid, for low- and moderate-income families. And it solves the pre-existing condition problem by setting up a marketplace, called an exchange, where insurers must sell policies to anybody, at one price, and cover all basic services. In order to prevent people from going uninsured until they get sick, it also requires everybody to purchase insurance, except in limited hardship cases.

<SNIP>

Reality lies in between the two mutually exclusive caricatures. First of all, the insurance industry has taken a decidedly mixed stance on health care reform. (Here’s a recent news story <11> detailing industry complaints.) Second of all, most of us normally accept private profit accompanying public services. Liberals don’t call programs to reduce class size a “teacher’s union bailout.” Nor do liberals call Pentagon increases a “defense contractor’s bailout.” Insurers may be getting a lot of new customers, but that comes with the trade-off of a lot of unwanted regulation. There is more at work in the progressive revolt than an irrational attachment to the public plan or an executive distrust of private industry. The bizarre convergence of left-wing and right-wing paranoia echoes the forces that brought down the moderate consensus of the postwar era. The GOP retreat into Plainism represents one half of this collapse. The left’s revolt against health care reform represents the other. What has re-emerged in recent weeks is the spirit of the New Left--distrustful of evolutionary change, compromise between business and labor, and the practical tools of progressive reform. It is the spirit that rejected Hubert Humphrey in 1968 and Al Gore in 2000.

The New Left rejection of “corporate liberalism” came at what we now regard as the historical apex of American liberalism. At the moment of another historical triumph, liberals are retreating from politics into languor, rage, and other incarnations of anti-politics. One day they may look back upon this time with longing.

Jonathan Chait is a senior editor of The New Republic.

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/just-noise

[Laelth]

1. This is the historical apex of American liberalism?

I want some of what Chait is smoking.

Kill the bill.

Forcing people to buy insurance is no more the answer to a failed health care system than forcing people to buy houses is the solution to homelessness.

:dem:

-Laelth

[FrenchieCat]

2. It is the historical aspect of political reality in the 21st century......

[rug]

3. The Edsel got down the road but I wouldn't call it the greatest car of our time.

[NJmaverick]

4. It's going to be added to the long list of progressive achievements

along with social security, minimum wage and safer food.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

5. Describing how the Gore fallout went down sounds remarkably similar to the town hall mtgs.

The right, meanwhile, was engulfed in passion that occasionally flared into rage. Mobs of chanting conservatives harassed Gore at his residence day after day. Another such mob intimidated Miami canvassers into abandoning a recount then seen as potentially decisive. The left met all this with a shrug.)

You could easily say the exact same thing about this summer.

[unblock]

6. i guess that's really just a sad statement about the OTHER social achievements of our time

[Armstead]

7. The New Republic lives to bash "the New Left"

They worked particularly hard to marginalize those leftist morons who opposed the rush to war in Iraq back in 02-03