Just to be clear, I voted for Barack Obama but I was not an ardent supporter during his campaign; nor am I now. He would have won me over though if yesterday, at the end of his inauguration, he had pulled out and signed an executive order immediately closing the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Cheney would have gone apoplectic and attacked him with his cane from his wheelchair, but it’s a great pipe dream.
I get that Obama wants consensus with the legislative branch on such things, telegraphing the clear message that the illegal expansion of powers of the executive branch under George W. Bush will not continue. I really get it. But I have to tell you that he would have brought a great number of those of us to his left into the fold with that singular gesture.
It’s time for broad, vibrant strokes of action. Time for, as Tom Friedman writes, “radical departures from business as usual in so many areas.” I, too hope Obama is a closet radical, but it’s pretty clear he’s not.
Harvard political theorist Michael Sandel tells Friedman:
“‘The system is built for stalemate. In ordinary times, the energy and dynamism of American life reside in the economy and society, and people view government with suspicion or indifference. But in times of national crisis, Americans look to government to solve fundamental problems that affect them directly. These are the times when presidents can do big things. These moments are rare. But they offer the occasion for the kind of leadership that can recast the political landscape, and redefine the terms of political argument for a generation.”
If everything really is on the table—and it surely should be—let’s start with health care. Expand Medicare to complete coverage for the entire populace. The infrastructure—Medicare itself—is already in place. Read it again: the infrastructure is already in place. Is Medicare perfect? Of course not; not by a long way, but it’s in place and it can be tweaked. Being in place and being more efficient is a huge start. Besides, having a single payer for all healthcare results in tremendous overhead efficiency savings. Couple that with mandatory and universal strongly secured online health records, and the savings grow (with the caveat that the records are the sole property of the individual on which they report).
And yes, I know that Obama campaigned on mandating private health insurance coverage. It’s simply not enough.
The Urban Institute says the “net additional cost of universal coverage ranges from three to six percent of current health spending of about US$70 billion to US$138 billion.” Let’s go whole hog and do it right. US$300 billion to expand the actual Medicare coverage to that of the best plans currently offered by private employers.
Expanded and enhanced Medicare for all would jump-start the economy on a number of different levels. Would-be entrepreneurs would no longer be tied to a piddling job just for the insurance benefits. Brilliant start-ups would bloom. Layoffs while we retool and green the rest of the economy would be not nearly as devastating. Costs would ease on employers, creating a virtuous circle of fewer layoffs, more hiring, and partnering with former employees with great ideas.
Image credit: Half-meter resolution image of the US Capitol and National Mall taken by the GeoEye-1 satellite during President Obama’s inauguration.
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