Health care debate needs a new perspective

When President Obama hits the road this week, traveling to Philadelphia and St. Louis as part of his final push on health care reform, he will be speaking to many American citizens who, as we have been consistently told, are all sick of hearing about health care reform. As Obama urges Congress to "finish its work" and attempts to drum up public support, it is worth considering whether his call warrants our help. As he admitted in the State of the Union address earlier this year, "I know that with all the lobbying and horse-trading, the process left most Americans wondering, 'What's in it for me?'"

This may be true, but it's the wrong question to ask and precisely the problem.

I had a conversation with a conservative classmate of mine who trotted out the usual arguments about health care reform as a government takeover of the health care industry. He claimed it would increase taxes, run up the deficit even more and create the big government that conservatives claim to dislike so much. I asked him to consider the recently unemployed worker with a curable yet possibly terminal illness who can't afford health care. His answer: "It's not my problem."

Well whose problem is it?

Health care reform is about saving lives. Despite the serious and, at times, morally reprehensible flaws of the bill (such as the restrictions on abortion funding and the exclusion of undocumented immigrants), the bill will improve health care in this country and save lives.

The question health care reform asks is to what extent are we as a society responsible for one another? Should we, or our government, let many people who can't afford or don't qualify for health insurance die?

This perspective has been lost amid the staggering level of abstraction at which the debate takes place. Many people, including my classmate, have simply never asked this question. The demagogic right-wing talk show hosts and conservative political pundits have waged war on reform because they insist it is just another excuse for the government to interfere in our lives. Does this mean that the right to good health is at odds with that great American ideal: personal, individual freedom?

So the question that health care asks the American people is not "What's in it for me?" That's the question senators ask. Instead, it asks us what responsibilities we all bear for our fellow human beings. It is for this compelling question that the issue is so important. It slices directly through other issues: foreign policy, civil liberties, poverty alleviation, education, energy, labor rights, undocumented immigrants and many others. Perhaps it can open the door for a broader debate and allow this real question, which the American right has forced out of view, to be asked.

Despite their disillusionment, if something is to be salvaged from this debate, progressives of all stripes need to shift the terms of the debate and ensure the bill is passed. With a bickering Congress hobbled by special interests, this can only be achieved by activists, students and ordinary people heeding Obama's call for a final push. A failure on health care now will cast a long shadow. Few other crucial legislative issues, climate change included, can be won without enough Americans realizing that the question is not about unfettered individual freedoms, but about justice.