Un-comprehending

A blog post at the Anglo-centric Economist is convinced that it’s American-style democracy that is at fault for healthcare reform not being passed. Yeah, the media takes a hit for focusing on politics and protests at the expense of the substance of the various House and Senate plans floating around in the ether.

And according to the author, America’s democracy (or the term that should’ve been used as it more accurately conveys the author’s argument given the context, “representative republic”) and it’s dependence on a legislative body and the electorate actually understanding such a complex issue is just gumming up the works, doggone it.

Most Americans agree that the nation's health-care system is not performing as it should. But democracy isn't doing the country any great favours when it comes to solving this problem. In another post, my colleague put forward the idea of random-citizen government. For complicated issues like health care, though, I think the country would be better served by a government of technocrats. Or why not have a panel of experts come up with a health-care bill that would then be put to an up-or-down vote? I know, I'm being unrealistic (and that last idea has shades of HillaryCare). It would be impossible to banish politics or politicians (or much of the media) from the debate. But I think it's worth pointing out that relying on a body that is generally disdained and answerable to an uninformed and often misinformed public seems like the worst way to go about fixing a complicated problem.

HillaryCare? How did that work out?

Of course, the author misses the point entirely. It’s not a random-citizen government (whatever that is) or a star chamber of Michael Dukakises that we need. What we need is to consider what a legislative body that has no interest in reading legislation let alone a piece that is over 1,000 pages long, is doing trying to make healthcare reform.

What we need to consider is why the public ( and contrary to the author’s belief, is actually better informed about this legislation than perhaps any other in their lifetime) that is bewildered and angered by the amount and degree of vagaries, unknowns and the unexplained, is asked to accept at face value that this will be good for them?

But mostly, to B-Daddy’s point, where is the precedent, where is the charter in our founding documents for Congress to take on such an endeavor in such an over-arching one-size-fits-all manner for something that is so intensely personal?

In the end, the author has it backwards. It’s not American-style democracy that is ill-suited to formulate,legislate and implement government-managed healthcare, it’s that government-managed healthcare is ill-suited to our style of democracy and our sensibilities as individual Americans.