Yesterday, Hillary Clinton got herself into trouble by recalling that RFK was assassinated in June. The point she seemed to be making was that it could happen to Barak Obama, and then what? So what's wrong with what Hillary said? She outlined an extreme case, a worst case scenario to justify her actions. Isn't that why many of our citizens backed the Patriot Act? Isn't that why we submitted to having our tweezers confiscated by airlines? Isn't that why our Constitution provided for the Speaker of the House taking over in the event both the President and Vice President died so that the leadership of our country would not be up for grabs?
When is it that we'll buy the argument about the worst case scenario and when will we tisk and click and be outraged that someone dare bring it up and label that person as a hysteric, or as engaging in mean-spirited negativism? It boils down to our egos. When we see the worst case scenario marketing as protecting us and our wallets, we love it. For instance, the Patriot Act. In the weeks and years following 9/11, news clip after news clip showed consumers accepting delays and happily handing over their shampoo, tweezers and fellow citizens for searches as a legitimate trade off to stop terrorism. Somewhere in all that the training the terrorists got on US grounds was forgotten, the fact that they were photographed by airline security was forgotten, and their non-citizen status was forgotten. Instead, we took control of our fear by removing our underwire bras and mouthwash bottles when we traveled.
We're doing the same thing with our "health care crisis". Anyone who is sick, or old, or potentially sick is a threat to those who consider themselves eternally young, eternally healthy, and therefore entitled to "affordable" health insurance. Instead of focusing on the situation which involves too little coverage for too much cost in combination with too much rise in the cost of medical services, we're taking control of our own wallets and ignoring that everyone who submits to the reasoning that only the healthy and strong are entitled to affordable health insurance coverage is also at risk for being cast out of the ever-shrinking eligibility for health insurance.
But successful worst case scenario marketing has another hook beyond the "it could happen to you" approach, it also involves matters that people consider "too big" to handle themselves. 9/11 was too big for us to handle so we left it to government. The governmental missteps in handling 9/11 at this point can fill volumes but we still flounder and flip around helplessly hoping that giving over everything including our good sense to "government" will make us feel safe.
What can we do about the health services crisis? The problem's "too big" so we allow big business and big government to work things out. And, like our reaction to 9/11, we gain control by telling ourselves that someone else is taking care of things. But, like our reaction to 9/11, it's not working. And like our reaction to 9/11, trying to fix things after the fact is harder, more difficult, more expensive and less likely than fixing the problem to begin with would have been had we not handed over our proxy without any limitations.
So what did Hillary say that was wrong? She rolled out the worst case scenario but she did it for her own personal reasons...that's what came across. When our President led us into Iraq and an endless war, we were sold based on lies (or mistakes if you omit all the evidence to the contrary) and then rationalized that it wasn't a bad thing since we didn't like Saddam Hussein anyway, but we resisted a conclusion that it was personal for George Bush, that he'd used our country's resources and his trust as our country's President for a selfish purpose. Not only did Ms. Clinton bring out a worst case scenario for seeming self-promotion, but citizens aren't worried about whether Hillary or Obama will win, really they're not. And the personal arguing between the two misses the point for the American people, that this squabble highlights some real issues in our process that do threaten individuals, whether it's the individuals in Florida and Michigan whose votes are meaningless because of the combined judgments of the Democratic Party, the maneuverings of the candidates within that party and the independence of the electoral college or the fact that the campaigning process itself is an overly expensive and overly time-consuming activity that keeps two senators away from performing their jobs as senators.
Hillary left out some sentences in her remarks...the ones justifying her worst case scenario example with the history of the US and our forefathers' wisdom in creating a system that protects against the worst case scenario....
Worst case scenario with our health services crisis? Well, clearly it's NOT the millions of uninsured US citizens, clearly it's NOT the tiered system of health services with better services available to the rich and our voted representatives arguing that the rich have a RIGHT to better health care because they can afford it, it's NOT the absolute disgusting sentiment expressed in the selection process of who is the Darwinian favorite for the survival of our species at a cheap cost, it's NOT the fact that we are sending an entire new generation into the world without the expectation that they can afford health care (see statistics on new graduates), it's certainly NOT any idea that the country that makes business prosper should demand that business partner with its greatest resource, it's people in achieving that profit, it's NOT an idea of fairness that the oldest and sickest have paid more to insurance companies than the young and healthy and therefore have EARNED the right to affordable health insurance, and it's NOT any idea that price-gouging by physicians is something that can be addressed because after all, they're doctors. Instead, we'll hand it over to the insurance companies to solve the problem and let them continue to pursue their goal of minimum risk for maximum premium, we'll trust big government responding to health insurance and medical lobbyists and we'll hold on to our own little piece of health insurance until we get sick and realize that we don't make the cut either...and instead of calling it tyrannical, barbaric, inhumane and Un American, we'll try to sell it as capitalism and the most American thing in the world.
So, as not to be NEGATIVE, what's the BEST case scenario with our current medical services environment: Everyone has sufficient health insurance coverage, health insurers help consumers to pay for the ever-increasing costs of medical services, everyone gets some TV personality caring "doctor" who gives them the bestest care ever and no one ever gets old or dies and we'll do it all by allowing health insurance companies to cover near nothing for increased premiums, as long as we can save that tax free five grand to cover costs for our families in our health savings accounts...and we'll do it by ignoring the increases in medical services costs justified by the "because we can" reasoning, and we'll trust our government will magically hand out screenings to all citizens for little to no cost to us because that will up the numbers of "insured" forgetting the fact that in the event any of those screenings shows a need for medical services we're back to insurance/provider costs. This leaves us with one last question as we ignore, spin and avoid examining reality: When does this stop being optimistic and register as nuts?
