Make 'Em Pay

The newspapers are publishing articles about Obama's sagging popularity, due in large measure to decreasing support for his health reform plan. Skipping over the fact that Obama doesn't actually have a health plan (he has just issued guidelines to Congress for the types of changes he would like to see), it seems to me that few have credited Obama for actually having the courage to take on a problem that he surely must understand is a hornet's nest of conflicting interest groups. His efforts to make insurance plans more fair and to cover more people is laudatory, but the problem he and the Congress have not shown signs of being able to successfully address (other than to raise taxes on the wealthy) is how to hold down the growth of the health system. All the players are for reform, as long as nothing is taken off their own plate.

Surely, if doctors were asked to line up to have their salaries reduced in order to save the government from going bankrupt, this would be the shortest line imaginable. Noone would show up. The insurance companies, who are already feeling great pressure to keep up their returns to please their shareholders are not going to be lining up to cut back their rates either. The pharmaceutical companies are not producing any new low priced drugs to help people get off their more expensive treatments. "New" and "low-priced" are oxymoronic in the pharmaceutical business. And hospitals and health care corporations are not fighting for the opportunity to give back their excess riches for the good of the community. They are too busy trying to stave off bankruptcy because of their own ever-increasing payouts.

Nor are people volunteering for less care. They are often being pushed into getting less because of the inability to afford the care that is presently available to them. And they are not happy about it. Noone is bragging about how much they are helping our society to manage its budgetary problems. No, if it is talked about, it is in the form of a complaint about not taking their medications so they can eat or pay their rent.

Here lies the problem: everyone wants less, but no one is willing to accept less for him or herself. I think it was Emerson who once said something like, "Every man will change the world, but no man will change himself." If I were Obama, I'd realize this and make 'em all pay. No one wants to suffer, but if we all partake in the suffering more or less equally, at least it's fair.