The Can't-Do Spirit
Ehrenreich, Barbara
Flip Side Barbara Ehrenreich The Can't-Do Spirit After their roaring two-house victory, the Democrats are squeaking about micro-policies. There will be no impeachment, we're told, though maybe a...
...They've caught the can't-do spirit that hovers over that former malarial swamp, Washington, D.C...
...So the most sensible plan is the one put forward by Anna Burger, head of labor's Change to Win coalition...
...When it comes to health care, the more cautious Dems trace their can't-do spirit to the great Hillary health reform debacle of 1993...
...As for Part D, a.k.a., "Part Doughnut Hole," no one has as yet been able to comprehend it, though it seems to work fine for people who are willing to substitute shark cartilage and lemon grass tea for prescription drugs...
...But six states just raised their minimum wages, and Nancy Pelosi promised to raise the federal minimum in her first 100 hours as Speaker of the House...
...No new program would haveto bedevised, and the fight over whether Medicare would leadtosocialism was resolved more than forty years ago...
...But what did they try...
...If the Dems can do that, they can do health care...
...It's not enough to have Medicare Parts A and B; you need supplementary health insurance to cover the co-payments...
...How could we do that...
...Here's a "phased redeployment" plan: Phase one, bus the troops to the nearest functioning airport in Saudi Arabia...
...Well, maybe they caught it long ago, when the Republican Congressional sweep of '94 sent Bill Clinton into long policy ruminations on school uniforms and midnight basketball...
...Hell, I'd spring for first class...
...The cautious way would be to expand Medicare to cover everyone...
...According to Travelocity, the airfare part would cost about $1,500 a person (coach class), or $225 million for 150,000 troops...
...No withdrawal from Iraq, only a "phased redeployment...
...Recall that as of the first week of November, raising the minimum wage was another "can't-do" issue: Can't do it because it might lead to inflation or unemployment, might offend the Chamber of Commerce, or, God knows, cause acne...
...Phase two, put them on regular commercial flights to the United States...
...They want a solution, and they want it now...
...Instead, they might try to reverse the Medicare drug plan's ban on bargaining for drug price discounts...
...Just extend it to everyone of any age...
...Barbara Ehrenreich is a columnist for The Progressive...
...And The New York Times assures us that the Dems "have largely dropped . . . talk of a Canadian-style national health insurance...
...Hey, we can do it, or at least something very similar...
...The only problem with that is that Medicare is as full of holes as the Bush rationale for the Iraq War...
...If the government won't come up with the ticket price, I'm sure thousands of ordinary citizens would happily dig into their own pockets...
...The Hill health plan would have created a vast new level of bureaucracy to contract for insurance from the big companies, thus tightening their evil grip over American health care...
...Her latest book is "Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream...
...There will be no impeachment, we're told, though maybe a bit more oversight of Halliburton-style war profiteering...
...She proposes extending the health insurance plan that currently covers members of Congress to everyone...
...Her website is www.barbaraehrenreich.com...
...Look, millions of voters didn't swing toward the Democrats because they wanted a $15 discount on their statins and beta-blockers...
...Since then, it's been almost nonstop can't-do: can't-do universal health insurance, can't-do hurricanes...
...If it's good enough for them," she asks, "Why isn't it good enough for every American...
...They voted out the can't-do Republicans in part because health costs are an immediate threat to ordinary Americans' livelihoods and lives...
...Then it turned out that we couldn't do war either, at least if that meant whipping the Taliban or finding an honorable way out of Iraq...
...Just renounce the can't-do spirit...
...We tried, they say, and it didn't work...
Vol. 71 • January 2007 • No. 1
