COMPLETELY OFF TOPIC: Health Care
Here’s the thing: the Health Care Debate.
Here’s the analogy: Paved Roads.
Here’s the strawman argument of the opposition, as filtered through the analogy:
“President Obama wants to tear up the roads! The Democrats want to take away your car! You won’t have a choice! You’ll have to walk, just like the rest of the plebes, and no one will get any kind of ride anywhere! You’ll have to make do with rutted dirt roads that will turn into mud quagmires if there is even a little rain, and the whole system will grind to a halt!”
There are even some who say any sort of health care reform means people will have to die.
I don’t think anyone is advocating the mandatory closing of any hospital, doctor’s office, health insurer, HMO (no matter how bad) or current state or federal program.
To belabour the analogy: No one is getting rid of roads, or forcing you to sell your car, or saying you have to make do with a clunker if you can afford a nice car, or telling your employer to take away your company car, or co-opting your limo and driver (should you have such) to drive the poor around town.
The whole transportation system will remain in place. The whole health care system will remain in place.
What is being proposed is the equivalent of a bus line. There are folks who have no cars. Maybe they pay for taxis (expensive, one-time uses of the system) — or they walk, making do without any sort of motorized help. Unless there is a public transit system.
And public transit isn’t free — you have to buy a token, or a bus pass, or something, but you chip in a bit and the gov’t chips in a bit and it’s not the best solution, it’s not a cushy ride, and you have to share — but it’ll get you there.
The public option for health care, as presented, and so far as I understand it, is like a public transit system for health care:
It’ll use the existing infrastructure. It won’t displace private, personal modes of navigating this infrastructure unless you choose to forgo those means. But if your employment changes (a job loss or a case of under-employment) or if you currently have nothing and can afford a token fee, there might soon be a way for you to use the same system the rest of us enjoy.
This is the argument and analogy that I think proponents of the proposed system should be making: The Public Health Care Option is like the Bus — and no one is going to force you to give up your “Car”, if you have one — but there needs to be a ‘bus service’ health care option for the folks who don’t have or can’t afford anything else.
