The Audacity

When I was 14 years old, my mother had a kidney transplant. The year before that, my aunt had one. Chronic renal failure is one of the hereditary gifts on that side of the family, but my brothers and I figured we would at least reach our 40’s before having to worry about dialysis and donor lists.

Then a few weeks ago, a doctor told me that I may have a problem with my kidneys. I’m 24 years old.

It’s why I haven’t posted in a while. I decided to head back to NYC for the time being, taking a job with a city school and continuing my columnist gig. Hopefully there turns out to be no serious issues. Part of me feels like this is just a good time to finally go back. I’ve been busy packing stuff up and canceling utilities, but for obvious reasons, I’ve also been thinking a lot about health care. Here is an enlightening segment from an AP article:

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama pushed back hard against Republican critics of his health care overhaul plan Monday, vowing to fight “the politics of the moment” and press for passage of legislation by the end of the year.

“We can’t afford the politics of delay and defeat when it comes to health care,” Obama said after meeting with doctors, nurses and other health care workers at Children’s National Medical Center. “There are too many lives and livelihoods at stake.”

Without mentioning his critic by name, the president recounted South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint’s comment that stopping Obama’s bid for health care overhaul could be the president’s “Waterloo,” a reference to the site of Napoleon’s bitter defeat.

“This isn’t about me,” Obama responded. “This isn’t about politics. It is about a health care system that is breaking American families.”

The president said it was time to “fight our way through the politics of the moment” and pass legislation by the end of the year, a shift in his repeated timetable. Obama had said previously that he wanted the House and Senate to vote on legislation before lawmakers leave town for their August recess, with a comprehensive bill for him to sign in October.

I look at an article like this and I feel excited at the prospect of working with native English-speaking New York high schoolers again. There is much about it that is instructive and useful for a lesson on examining premises. What exactly are the politics of “the moment” or “delay and defeat”? What does the fact that Obama’s rhetoric is becoming more obviously empty than it already was suggest? Obama cannot offer a single substantive reason as to why the congress must rush to pass this overhaul according to his timetable; instead he tosses out some slogans and insinuations praying his image will do the rest.

Stop and think about it for a spell. This isn’t some minor esoteric bit of tax policy; his intention is to completely reconfigure our entire health care system. Whatever bill the congress passes will alter the medical care, insurance, hospital standards, training, and very livelihood of hundreds of millions of people. The extraordinarily modest trillion dollar price tag will be paid for decades to come, likely by our children and grandchildren. This is absolutely not the sort of thing that should be cannon blasted through the congress after a couple of weeks of debate where none of the members even have time to read the bill. Someone needs to ask this guy exactly who the hell he thinks he is. “Audacity” is precisely the word for it.

Richard Lowry of National Review made several good points on this topic:

Why else the mad dash? Obama noted in an interview with ABC News the other day that his health program won’t be phased in until 2013. That’s four years from now. The problem that Obama describes of rising health-care costs bankrupting the government is also a long-term issue, one that needn’t be addressed in pell-mell fashion over the next two weeks.

But the longer Obama’s health-care program marinates in the sun, the worse it smells. Obama’s signature line that anyone who likes his current coverage gets to keep it has been shown to be untrue in recent weeks. His rationale of passing a $1 trillion program to reduce costs is undermined every time the Congressional Budget Office analyzes a real Democratic proposal. No wonder Obama wants to close down the debate before his rating on health care — down to 49 percent in the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll — drops any farther.

Ramming through legislation without any assurance that it will work doesn’t seem pragmatic or farsighted. But for Obama’s purposes, it is. His goal is nothing short of an ideological reorientation of American government. Putting in place the structures to achieve this change in the power and role of government is more important than how precisely it is accomplished.

The stimulus might not do much to stimulate the economy during the recession, but its massive spending creates a new baseline for all future spending. The cap-and-trade bill might not reduce carbon emissions during the next decade, but it creates a mechanism for exerting government control over a huge swath of the economy. Obamacare might not work as advertised, but it will tip more people into government care and create the predicate for rationing and price controls.

I seriously hope that I don’t have any serious issue with my kidneys. Like the rest of the economy, I think our healthcare system is going to get worse before it gets better. The best thing that could happen now is that the blue dog democrats delay long enough for support to drop below 40%, forcing Obama to renegotiate. Really, anything that slows this shit sandwich of a bill down is a good thing. Ideally the 2010 elections would happen first, during which some good republicans would get into office and start kicking some ass, but who’s really optimistic about that happening? It’s likely that the congress will eventually pass something just to make themselves feel important.

But if the consolation prize is that Obama is left permanently crippled politically, I’ll take that with a smile. Hopefully this really will be his Waterloo. If the abstractions of financial markets and banking regulations didn’t hit Americans hard enough after hundreds of billions in stimulus spending, hopefully the specter of government rationed health care will spook enough to give the tea party movement some teeth.