Call a doctor, the middle needs health care… reform.
Centrism is, at times, a powerful force for good. If for no other reason than most Americans are not radicalized to the left or the right, finding the center and acting on that moderate agenda is often an effective means to the end of moving forward, but not leaving people behind. That said, centrism and moderation have their own flaws as well, and we’d be foolish not to acknowledge them.
The bill currently moving through the Senate is an example of one problem with centrism: it can leave no one happy. Progressives are saying it doesn’t do enough, conservatives are afraid it does to much, and the middle… well, we don’t seem to think its going to accomplish anything at all, except make things more expensive.
And who can blame us? Weve seen Washington bail out Wall Street without passing any reform, and they are just back to their old tricks. We’ve seen a job stimulus that may or may not be working – but the website that went to show us it was working had an extra 440 Congressional Districts on it. And we’ve seen credit card reform pass in such a way that the cards had time to raise their rates more than double before it was enacted, to insulate themselves from the real effects of that reform. Is there any chance Health Care reform can do any better?
If we take away the option from Health Care companies to drop our coverage if we get a bad condition or to deny us coverage in the first place, that sounds good, but its subverted by the fact they can still raise our rates to price us out of coverage.
If we mandate coverage for all Americans but don’t make coverage affordable, what have we really accomplished?
I want health care reform, and I didn’t necessarily need to see a public option, although I generally support one. But passing only part of a set of laws, in the name of political expediency, because Senate rules allow one or two people a large amount of power, isn’t a good way to do things. It looks like centrism – “moderates and Republicans forced the Democratic bill to the center” – but it isn’t in the middle in any logical, thought out way. It is more like if the bill had been given to a mad barber.
Perhaps this is one reason why no one thinks well of the middle – nothing gets there unscathed.
