Instead of the usual dueling protests on College Avenue (pro-Iraq war vs. anti-Iraq war), today's topic was health care reform. On the west side of the street, supporters were waving signs. On the other side, opponents were waving their own signs. I wouldn't have noticed, but the east side of the road (whose demonstrators would describe themselves as "anti-socialist") was the same side of the street as the local Safeway, where I intended to buy a few groceries.
These champions of free enterprise had managed to fill the shopping center's parking lot with their own vehicles, making it difficult for both the businesses and their customers. After finding a space elsewhere, I asked one of the managers whether business was slow, and if they knew their parking lot had been monopolized. She said that they were aware of the situation outside, business was awful, and both the police and the organizers had been notified, but I didn't see anyone moving their vehicles out of the lot. Ironically enough, at least half of the people protesting government provision of medical care looked like they were eligible for (and most likely receiving) Medicare benefits. I can only assume that if the protest was advocating the elimination of ALL government assistance in health care (which would necessarily include the elimination of Medicare), most if not all of the older protesters would have been on the other side of the street.
If the demonstrators did not care about the way they were interfering with a private business and their customers, then it is difficult to believe this was really about the protection of the free enterprise system. If it was a heartfelt opposition to government provision of health care services, some of the signs should have been advocating the repeal of programs like Medicare and VA hospitals and clinics. If they truly were concerned about third parties getting in between themselves and their doctors, there would have been at least some demands to place restrictions on the power of private insurers to do exactly that.
Was it about protecting the quality of U.S. health care, or maybe about keeping costs down? That is what a lot of the signs said, but the facts and figures say otherwise. The United States has the highest per capita health care costs ($5,711 in 2003) and spends the greatest share of its GDP (15.2%) on health care. By far. If we are shelling out that kind of money for health care, we must be the healthiest nation on earth, right?
Wrong. We are 46th in infant mortality (6.26 deaths per 1,000 live births, two spaces below Cuba) and 50th in life expectancy (78.11 years, two spaces below Bosnia-Herzogovina). In other words, we spend more on health care than anyone else, and we die sooner and lose more of our children than at least 45 other countries.
So we have protesters, many of whom were happily receiving government-provided health care and retirement benefits, who didn't seem to care that they were keeping some of their neighbors from buying groceries or earning a living (remember the Safeway?), demanding that we keep a system in place that is more expensive and less effective than all those countries with "socialized medicine?" Why were they really out there?
Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) was honest enough to give the real reason:
"If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him."
There it is. It's not about health. It's not about money. At least it's not about our money. It is about the GOP's prospects in the 2010 and 2012 elections, and in turn, the prospects of the large corporations who support them. It appears that they would rather see their fellow Americans die before their time and their hard-earned money thrown down an ever-growing rathole than see the GOP lose another election.
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