The raucous town hall meetings around the overhaul of health care could be a harbinger of how the debate around immigration reform may take shape. Advocates of sensible and humane reform—on any issue—must re-double their efforts against attempts to hijack what should be civil public discussions.
This week, yet another town hall meeting was a display of the frothy, angry right. In attendance were not merely critics of health care reform proposals but those ready to weave this issue into a political agenda.
Since the national debate on health reform was re-ignited, Republican operatives have used it to hype up Americans angry about other issues and to mount opposition. Their purpose is not to constructively address an expensive system that has left Americans out or at the brink of financial ruin but to make a Democratic administration look bad.
Americans have a right to know what the implications of any health care reform proposal will be for their own situations. And they also have a right to the facts of the proposals. But what we are seeing is a concerted effort towards leaving the status quo in place and substituting sound bites for information. And the ringleaders of this effort are hardly the uninsured or under-insured.
Most Republicans rather leave healthcare to market options. Has that worked? Ask the 46 million Americans who are uninsured. Ask health insurance advocates who had to fight tooth and nail so that children alone could be covered by public health insurance. And ask middle class families who can’t afford health insurance premiums, so they go without coverage or face bankruptcy because of high costs.
Champions of immigration reform find the tenor of this increasingly hostile health care debate too familiar—all the more reason for the grassroots educational effort that Americans deserve, not the public relations sabotage under way.
The raucous town hall meetings around the overhaul of health care could be a harbinger of how the debate around immigration reform may take shape. Advocates of sensible and humane reform—on any issue—must re-double their efforts against attempts to hijack what should be civil public discussions.
This week, yet another town hall meeting was a display of the frothy, angry right. In attendance were not merely critics of health care reform proposals but those ready to weave this issue into a political agenda.
Since the national debate on health reform was re-ignited, Republican operatives have used it to hype up Americans angry about other issues and to mount opposition. Their purpose is not to constructively address an expensive system that has left Americans out or at the brink of financial ruin but to make a Democratic administration look bad.
Americans have a right to know what the implications of any health care reform proposal will be for their own situations. And they also have a right to the facts of the proposals. But what we are seeing is a concerted effort towards leaving the status quo in place and substituting sound bites for information. And the ringleaders of this effort are hardly the uninsured or under-insured.
Most Republicans rather leave healthcare to market options. Has that worked? Ask the 46 million Americans who are uninsured. Ask health insurance advocates who had to fight tooth and nail so that children alone could be covered by public health insurance. And ask middle class families who can’t afford health insurance premiums, so they go without coverage or face bankruptcy because of high costs.
