Let's all take a moment and forget the politics of healthcare. Forget how you're registered to vote, what channel you get your news from, and what you think of the president and Congress. Take a breath. Now ask yourself this question: is it a moral imperative to reform healthcare so that those unable to attain coverage are able to do so?
The answer, clearly, is yes. That isn't to say I support the idea of a single-payer system (I don't) or a public option (I don't, at least not as it is currently defined). It means I agree with Obama and others when they say that this is a moral issue, not just an economic or political one.
We forget -- while thinking about big government and small government, about political parties and numbers of votes, about the sheer political gravity of this issue -- that lawmaking is sometimes about right and wrong. Democrats forget because they feel powerful. Republicans forget because they feel weak. As parts of either a significant majority or minority, most have retreated into political comfort zones. There are exceptions, of course.
If we all stopped for a minute and agreed on this much I think we would be much closer to finding the solution. If we viewed the issue through a lens of right and wrong, with the idea in mind that this matters, could we put parties and allegiances out of mind for a while? That might not jibe with the kind of people drawn to politics. I don't know.
Roger Ebert, whose writing I love but whose politics I don't care for, said something similar last week, though from it he drew a conclusion I disagree with. In paraphrase, it went something like this: if healthcare reform is morally right, then the public-option plan is morally right. This is too easy, too political. If healthcare reform is a moral imperative, we need to do better than that.
This might be the first of multiple posts on healthcare. If it is, I'll get into what shape I believe reform should take later on. Maybe that will happen in the comments. I hope it does, because this post is a better starting point for debate than one involving specifics.
