Commentary—

Health Care Deserves An Honest Debate

By Michael B. Keegan

 Today, America is in the midst of an important struggle to reform our health care system. It’s not surprising that a national debate about such a personal issue can raise passions, but health care reform demands an honest debate. So far, it hasn’t been getting one.

 Extremists opposed to the President’s agenda have spent millions to cloud the real issues by claiming that President Barack Obama is a socialist and that health care reform is a plot by Democrats to turn America into some sort of Stalinist state. Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey’s lobbying firm has been paid to put out memos urging opponents of reform to shout down members of Congress who support reform to keep them from speaking.

 On television, Pat Robertson took to Glenn Beck’s show to warn Americans that President Obama is taking advantage of health care reform “to insert socialism and government control.” For his own part, Beck has accused Obama of hating whites, stoking paranoid fantasies about “FEMA internment camps.” And Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs, and others have decried the rise of “liberal fascism,” and compared the Democratic Party to the Nazis and health care reform to the Holocaust.

 In important debates like this one, it’s more crucial than ever that we address our concerns with honesty and respect. So it’s deeply disappointing that right-wing extremists and hatemongers interested in handing President Obama a defeat by stopping health insurance reform are propagating misinformation, fear, and distrust.

 Anti-reform leaders have enthusiastically embraced the politics of fear to mobilize their base against sound measures to correct major problems with our current health care system, invoking outrageous scare tactics like the false claims that providing health care for all Americans will lead to “rationing” or that the President’s initiative demands so-called “death panels.”

 The health care debate has provided a forum for the right-wing to express its anti-government, anti-reform views in the interest of supporting the status quo — an expensive and inefficient system in which 47 million people have no insurance at all.

 But we shouldn’t be surprised that there’s a raucous minority attempting to thwart change that can benefit all of us. After all, we’ve seen it before.

 When civil rights legislation passed in the middle of the last century, finally granting all Americans the ability to cast a vote that counts, many on the far right claimed that it would lead to the enslavement of white people. And before that, there were those who accused Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman of surrendering outright to communism.

 It’s disappointing that there are those who will react violently and aversely to any kind of change, but the lesson of our history is that if we pull together we can deliver the changes that are needed. After all, the 1960s civil rights movement is now, rightfully, considered one of the proudest moments in American history. FDR and Truman are now considered to be two of our finest presidents who, far from pushing communism, fought hard to protect democracy.

 No matter how one feels about particular legislative proposals, we can all agree that the health care system we have now is broken. In the richest country in the world, few of us can be entirely certain that we’ll even have health insurance just a year from now — jobs disappear, premiums rise, and insurance companies can drop coverage seemingly without reason.

 That situation is intolerable, but fixing it will be hard work. A noisy and extreme minority will work hard to block any change at all. And it’s a testament to our freedoms that their right to do so is unquestioned. But the rest of us can’t be held hostage to the lies, the fear, and the misinformation of a few.

 We need an honest conversation about health care, and although it would be best to be able to exchange ideas with those from across the political spectrum, it’s clear that there are those who have shown that they have no interest in sitting at the grown-up table. Yet our debate about health care is too important to be held up by those who are unwilling to participate in a meaningful way.

(Michael B. Keegan is president, People for the American Way (www.pfaw.org), which strives to meet the challenges of discord and fragmentation with an affirmation of “the American Way.” )