This post is a discussion about health care repeal efforts and how they tie into the current state of political rhetoric. My opinion that it makes no sense to repeal the health reform law is largely predicated upon the following points:
1 - The 2008 presidential election was about the economy, health care, and the war in Iraq. President Obama received 69,456,897 votes to win the election. Everyone was talking about health care reform on the campaign trail, including the Republicans - it seemed to just be a matter of who was put in office as to which reform plan would be adopted.
2 - The health insurance reform bill that was passed (yes, I call it health insurance reform, not health CARE reform, because the bill does not in any way address care, only paying for that care) is very similar to proposals put forth in the past by several conservatives in the past, including Senator Richard Armey. In fact, it was the "market-based solution" created in response to Democratic attempts at health care reform in the early 1990s.
3 - A wide variety of polls have always shown that there are more people who oppose the health insurance legislation because it did not go far enough than there are who oppose health insurance legislation because it goes too far and should be appealed. Recent polls show close to twice as many people think it doesn't go far enough. Recent polls have also seen a trend of decreasing support for repeal among Republicans.
4 - The Congressional Budget Office estimates the legislation will create 30 million new customers for the private insurance sector and repealing the law will add over $200 billion to the federal deficit, while the current law will reduce the deficit in the long run. Republican health care legislation scored by the CBO is all projected to increase the deficit.
5 - John Boehner was re-elected to Congress in 2010 with 139,118 votes for what would be his inaugural term as Speaker. In 2008 he was re-elected with 202,063 votes, versus Barack Obama's 69,456,897.
Given those facts and, of course, the current state of the economy, why do Republicans think that repealing health insurance reform is so important that it is one of the first things they vote on when they formed the new Republican-led House? It is one of Speaker Boehner's main priorities, as if the midterm election was a referendum on repealing the bill, when I wouldn't exactly call less than 140,000 votes (over 60,000 less than two years prior) is any kind of mandate. He gained the speakership because conservatives won seats due to the LOW voter turnout of the 2010 midterm election. Most of the provisions don't even go into effect for years. Why don't we talk about what we can do right now to create jobs and strengthen the economy?
Then there's the name of the bill - Repeal the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act. What has happened to this country? Since when did political rhetoric such as "Job-Killing" become acceptable to use in the title of legislation passed by the US Congress? What purpose does that language serve? A title like that is a conversation stopper, not the beginning of a discussion.
After Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords' recent shooting, the nation's attention was drawn to an important question - does violent political rhetoric influence violent behavior? The answer is, and always has been, clearly YES. The public was quick to make some re-evaluations of much of the recent rhetoric, and Sarah Palin naturally became the center of the debate on violent, gun-referencing rhetoric and symbols. How could she not? She has put a lot of effort into becoming the poster child for the sector of the public that likes to incorporate their firearms into every aspect of daily life, and she felt compelled to be the only person in the country to release a nearly 10 minute long video with her thoughts on the Arizona shooting, including why she isn't to blame. Oh yeah, and she has a map with crosshairs over Congresswoman Giffords' name, which was up on her Facebook page until a few hours after the shooting (I went to her page and pulled down the picture that afternoon before she scrubbed her site of all the gun references). Giffords was recorded months earlier talking about the crosshairs map, and since her shooting, her husband made statements that Congresswoman Giffords had told him on multiple occasions that she had a fear of getting shot at one of her events.
So a possible sequence of events goes like this - a disturbed young college student is battling mental illness and is not medicated. His delusions become increasingly violent. He is 22 years old in modern day America, so he spends countless hours on the internet, whittling time away by doing things like posting videos on YouTube. All he has to do is read the major news outlets, and he is bombarded with "second amendment remedies" and similar statements by politicians at any given time. He could have been reading the Huffington Post or the Drudge Report, it wouldn't have mattered - either way, he would have come across Sarah Palin's crosshairs map and a multitude of similar imagery/statements with ease. And there he is - after months of listening to political candidates screaming that the government is taking over every aspect of our lives, such that we need to resort to second amendment remedies - when he sees the image of a gun sight over his very own Congresswoman, whom he has long disliked. He decides to target her in a deadly shooting rampage at the easiest way he can find her - a regular constituent event at a local grocery store.
Very often, people who are mentally ill and have a tendency towards violence are eventually going to commit a violent act if they go without treatment. So no, Sarah Palin, you are not responsible for Jared Loughner committing a violent act; however, it would be dangerous to ignore the fact that the violent political rhetoric that has been flooding the airwaves and broadband lines in recent months very likely influenced the manner in which Loughner chose to carry out his violent fantasy. The discourse in this nation has been launched off its rails, mainly by fear. I am truly appalled that I am barely an adult, and yet I am having to make the statement that we must re-introduce civility into our discourse or risk our political process falling apart.
Some people are quick to dismiss this notion, claiming that you can't blame anyone for the actions of one crazy person. Very few of these people have had extended contact with the mentally ill. My father is a psychiatrist who has been practicing medicine for over 30 years. He has always dealt in severe mental illness, like schizophrenia. I have had this conversation with him on several occasions, including right after Congresswoman Giffords was shot. He will be the first one to say that violent rhetoric most certainly can and does influence the behavior of mentally ill individuals that already have violent tendencies, and that we are foolish as a society to ignore the link. This potential damage is compounded by state mental health systems that have been systematically dismantled over the past few decades.
While the blatant violent references are the ones that stand out the most as being part of the problem with discourse in this nation, the problem has extended all the way to the House floor. It is bad enough that the Republicans insist on voting to repeal the health insurance legislation despite less than a fifth of the country supporting their position, but titling the bill "Repeal the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act" is among the sort of antics that will only serve to keep our political discourse damaged and fractured, and it must be condemned. We can't work together to bring civility back to politics if one side refuses to talk to the other. "Job-Killing" says the discussion is already over. Let's not stop the conversations before they even get the chance to start.
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