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This Speakout has not been edited.

By Dan Fishbein

In numerous states across the nation efforts are under way to discuss and resolve the growing problems in health care and health care insurance. Although these are in a preliminary stage, the efforts have provoked a shrill and divisive backlash, to which apparently the Rocky Mountain News has decided to assume a lead role, both in today’s and in recent editorials.

Key participants in the states that have undertaken health care reform, along with Members of Colorado’s own 208 commission, have highlighted the importance of reasoned and civic public discussion, and the critical challenge and need of developing a consensus in order for any chance of successful health care reform to occur.

In light of that need, the backlash effort focuses on two tactics which are all the more insidious and irresponsible for occurring so early in the debate.

Since the health care issue touches every home in some manner, the challenge of creating a consensus becomes even more important. The first tactic used by the backlashers is to evoke fear with select and often distorted predictions of increased taxes and other consequences. The hoped for effect is to divide public opinion and to shift the debate into protecting one’s turf (and benefits) at all costs, and limiting the discussion by labeling certain approaches (“socialized medicine”) or evoking sound bites to try and stigmatize these plans (“rationing”).

After the initial impact of the fear based assault, an even more insidious tactic is to present a “reasonable” alternative in incremental changes designed to offer a “calming” alternative to the fear evoked in the backlash’s initial assault.

It is insidious because our nation has had a succession of incremental approaches to health care reform which have led us to the current efforts at broader reform, and despite initial modest successes the health care morass deepens and the costs of both health care and insurance continue to soar.

The failure of incremental approaches reinforces a cynicism in the electorate that the problem is unsolvable, that no one can be trusted in the debate, and that we best cling to the remaining tattered fabric and hope that we are not amongst the increasing unfortunate who lose their benefits or are hit with huge health care bills.

The issue is not whether single-payer is the right way to go (it may not be). We need to resist efforts to polarize the debate, and to build on the belief that consensus requires the broadest possible base, and that may well require significant changes in our system.

Let’s try and allow the debate to proceed and resist joining the doomsday backlash.

Dan Fishbein is a resident of Arvada.

READER COMMENTS

Michael
The end game is for the minority to force a policy on a majority who think it's a bad idea.

Health care is a service for which money is paid but too many people never see the bill. The government program or the insurance company will pay it and the blissfully ignorant majority doesn't want to know anything about it.
Return the power to the individual to obtain insurance at a reasonable rate by removing the tax
deductions given to businesses and giving them to individuals.
Many other things can be considered but the present system is subsidized ignorance which benefits the sellers not the customers. Fix it by letting people choose and be responsible for their choices.

Tom, you are truly a small mind. Conservatives do not hate kids. We hate people like you who try to steal from others to pay for things you want instead of you paying for yourself.

If you cannot afford to have children, and expect your neighbors to pay for them, then that is where we part company. I do not expect you to pay for my health care, my food or my home. I do not want to pay for yours.

How is it moral to steal from others?

Michael,You mentioned The Dailykos.That website is a cesspool of hatred and it is disgusting.
Quite a few Democratic Presidential Candidates showed up at their convention.

To me that speaks volumes.
I don't know which way I will vote,but the ones that showed up at the convention in my opinion have legitimized a hate website that makes the Aaryan nation look like preschoolers.

Repukes HATE kids. They don't want poor kids to have health care. Chimpy is threatening a veto.

This insurance would be paid for with cigarette taxes, not the income tax.

Repukes are idiots who still support our BROKEN "free market" healthcare system. I don't care if its socialized, commie, fascist or whatever...I want healthcare that WORKS. The US is #42 in the world in healthcare now. We should be #1.

Socialized Health Care.....NO....this is a free country..let the free market determine the price of health care. No one is "entitled" to health care by the government.

When the government is expected to supply you with everything in your life...you no longer have any freedom left at all.

If health care is so important, then why should there be any debate? Lets do healthcare the way American free-market capitalism does everything else. Let's make our own responsible choices and let's shop the system in our own best interest. Competition and choice are the best way to reduce costs and generate high quality. Monopolies (single payer, single provider)never work for the consumers. And single payer/provider, by definition, is a monopoly.

The alternative is to rely on the same crowd that runs the post office, maintains our bridges and sets our national energy priorities for our own healthcare. And that's a fatal heart-attack if there ever was one!

You want the debate to proceed, but you don't want citizens to suggest "reasonable" alternatives -- unless, presumably, you like them -- or to predict "increased taxes and other consequences."

If people's criticisms end up dividing public opinion, you can take solace in the fact that the Republic is still healthy and functioning.

I continue to find it hilarious how when conservatives disagree with an idea and state their opposition it is called "polarizing" and "divisive", but when liberals disagree and state their opposition it is called "disagreement" and "debate."

And, yes, liberals are FAR more likely to engage in name-calling and viciously personal attacks. Doubt it? Visit DailyKos some day, and then compare that to Free Republic.

The point is, "consensus" may not be acheivable if you're willing to throw overboard a huge segment of that "broadest possible base". But that's politics--to the victors go the spoils.

Just don't use the rhetorical bludgeon of "consensus" when the end-game is for the majority to simply force a policy on those who think it's a bad idea.

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