Op Ed: Healthcare-Summit GOPsters Modify Futile Obstruction

Obama “Transparency” Triumphs for Nation-to-Know.

White House Photo, Lawrence Jackson, 2/25/10

(EUGENE, Ore.) - “By their actions ye shall know them” - sensible, sensitive rule found in any Bible.

Ordinarily it relates to one or the other of some horrendous cabal deeply involved in desperate denial and usually also in deepening self/doo-doo brought on by their own behaviors.

We may be “seeing with own eyes” -- and hearing with own ears, too -- a similarly scarifying situation for the rascally remnants of the GOPster cabal visibly coming apart in a beleaguered Washington.

That cabal is now futilely seeking still further defense of any kind for their long-continued -- and still maintained -- damaging obstructions clearly meant to defy the wit, wisdom and expressed will of the nation. President Obama calmly “covered the waterfront” in his conscientious, careful consolidation of both problems and possible solutions via his skilled consideration for all points of view, at his historic Healthcare Summit Thursday.

He simply led them to “talk it out” -- always a strong group-process technique -- knowing that what they then showed is precisely what the nation now needs to know -- and understand: WHO stands for WHAT, HOW it will work and WHAT it will COST. (For complete, accurate, nonpartisan review-in-depth with detail on every point covered, well beyond space available here, see report SCALING THE SUMMIT at thinkprogress.org)

As always, that process -- most skillfully applied by President Obama -- resulted in a roundup of realistic and pragmatic points, from both the proponents and opponents.

The current confused Congressional conglomeration masquerading as “the final solution” (!) to our massive healthcare problems, both systematic and operational, was bared in its brutal actuality via this revealing process.

The GOPsters' continuing campaign tactics are now highly visible to the nation’s Summit viewers. The President’s Summit has clearly revealed further details of the GOPsters' contemptuously applied pretend-pattern for participating in Constitutional, and thus proven fully democratic governance.

New, intense and rapid action demanded by the President “within six weeks” may perhaps even lead to closing down the well-recorded long reign of GOPster defiance and delay via defeatism and obvious political pandering. In essence, we are seeing skilled application of the first principle for democratic consensus-building: Patience, Persistence and People-Power applied via open, honest, public dialog.

What President Obama accomplished on Thursday may well come to comprehensive acceptance as among the most historic actions-taken by American Presidents. Not only did he demonstrate to the nation his own Presidential responsibility to seek, valiantly in the face of determined dissent, the consensus which commands respect and obedience by all, but he did so openly and historically, in full view of the whole nation.

THEN he offers what can only be seen as fully pragmatic and promising motivation for mutually-made next-steps: He imposed a completely practical plan for fully consensual preparation of Congressional action on the heart of the matter -- within six weeks!

Rapid American media analysis is nearly unanimous on success of the Obama Summit. Example: The New York Times observed: “Mr. Obama’s mastery of the intricacies of health policy was impressive even to some Republicans”.

President Obama made sure the GOPster contingent understood full well that the time has now come -- as it inevitably does for our democracy facing denial of the Constitutional responsibility for pledged consideration of the commonweal -- for rapid, effective, cost-efficient action in lieu of further defensive and damaging party-serving political pandering.

By no means is “the war” over: This complex issue, demanding full involvement of massive national funds and equally broad control, by effective, efficient, proven and practical methods already in place for preceding parts of the reformed system illuminates in glaring detail the differences in democratic design, development and designated impact of governance itself.

That “war” has been going on ever since the early Federalist/Anti-Federalist confrontations concerning Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison and even Washington. What constitutes its concentration of conflict-now for all to “see and hear”, via the Summit and many more similar situations surely yet-to-come, is the deeply dangerous, personally and family-damaging depredation and despair visited upon some FIFTY MILLION of us, without means to manage what the whole rest of the world now recognizes as a foundationally-essential full-scale “human right”.

We remain the only modern "developed" nation with the dollar-driven profits-uber-alles partially-covering insurance industry, still deeply devastating even many of those making full payment.

They now are facing fantastically-rising rates, rapid retraction of benefits precisely when most needed, and massive manipulations by fees and failures to serve as seemed-the-case when sign-up took place. Despite GOPster insistence that they are already in agreement “with eighty percent of the reform-plan” put on record by the President and his party, the radical role for defiance and denial of demonstrated national concerns continues.

GOPster leaders -- clearly deterred but not yet defeated by the compelling outcomes of this Summit -- continue their demand for complete retraction of the President’s plan, starting with “a clean sheet of paper”.

While healthcare costs continue to mount on truly colossal rate-and-totals, to often-expressed desperate frustration by all concerned, the GOPster gang offer only coverage for THREE of FIFTY MILLIONS now clearly hurt and with families hurting, too.

“Re-engineering the insurance market and providing subsidies requires too much government and too much money”, they contend. Their premier plan harks back all the way to 1993 -- and offers precisely the same “high-risk pools” and “insurance standards” they offered THEN!

They also offered “health saving plans” to provide for family preparation for catastrophic care demands. When President Obama confronted one GOPster by asking if he would “be satisfied if every member of Congress had only catastrophic care?”, the answer was “I think we would -- we’d have more 'skin in the game'", referring to that old mythical message that safety-net provisions erode and destroy personal responsibility.

President Obama then calmly responded: “Would you feel the same way if you were making only $40,000?"

Of course he is completely aware that even yet many American families do not enjoy that level of economic security. The Gobster cabal clearly still prefers to defend an abstract, outmoded, disproven and defeated-by-event principle of governance philosophy, echoing that failed precept from previous now-painful years: “Government IS the problem!”

You know from whence cometh that one, and should also know by now the catastrophic consequences which most economists and social and cognitive scientists, among others, agree stems from that distortion of democracy. Meanwhile families fail and fathers seek desperately for resources “to keep us all alive and together”.

Despite loss of jobs and homes and the current receding-level of benefits in most states, due to heavy state-level costs for safety-net coverage for those SIXTEEN MILLIONS now seeking work again in this nation.

What will be the duly-dramatic and consequential next-steps following furiously -- perhaps fantastically -- on the premier and progressive Healthcare Summit so truly transparently set up and sent as a significant signal to our nation? Nobody knows, yet; but YOU, TOO can design and help to shape whatever our elected Congressional leaders now must actually do: Cooperate and consolidate and create consensus for the commonweal, as demanded “within six weeks” by our President elected only ONE YEAR ago.

It’s YOUR “skin in the game” and YOU can PLAY, too -- by rapid, continuing communication with your Congressional VOTE/chosen-ones, who owe you and yours conscentious consideration as their constituency and for the commonweal.

What YOU then DO, TOO -- and TO WHOM -- will be true proof of our democracy in its current state. President Theodore Roosevelt, in somewhat similar circumstance, once told Congress: “The American people are slow to wrath, but when their wrath is kindled, it burns like a consuming flame.” We will do well to avoid that “consuming flame”.

Hank returned to Oregon to complete M. Ed. degree at OSU, went on to Indiana University for Ed.D. (abd) and special other course-work; was selected as first Information Director for NAVA in Washington, D.C.; helped write sections of NDEA, first Act to supply math, science, foreign language consultants to state depts. of education; joined Oregon Dept. of Education, where he served as NDEA administrator/Learning Media Consultant for ten years.

He joined Dr. Amo DeBernardis at PCC, helping establish, extend programs, facilities, Oregon/national public relations; moved to Chicago as Editor/Publisher of oldest educational-AV journal, reformed as AV GUIDE Magazine; then established and operated Learning Media Associates as general communications consultant group. Due to wife’s illness, he returned to Oregon in 1981, semi-retired, and has continued writing intermittently ever since, joining S-N in 2004. His Op Eds now total over 560 written since then.