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Editorial: Healthcare reform and divisive politics play out on Twitter
Posted by Chasse Rehwinkel on 9/07/09 • Categorized as Commentary, Health, Politics
When I think of a town hall meeting I picture some Hawthornian worded scene from the mid-18th century, where a board of town elders has convened to listen to the grievances of the ordinary townsfolk regarding a moral peril that threatens their tiny closed community.
So you can see why I was excited when I heard that the healthcare reform debate had moved to this theater of discussion.
Being one of the nearly 50 million uninsured citizens in the United States, and a young journalist who often gets roped into covering community meetings, I felt it wise to sit in on one of these town hall meetings to see how the debate had evolved.
The answer: surprisingly ugly.
What perhaps started with the best intentions quickly devolved into a shouting match between two clearly demarcated sides.
I saw grown men, red-in-the-face with anger, being held back from attacking other attendees over the meeting’s preceding. I witnessed others, their voices drowned out by a choir of hisses, sit back down in their seats with looks of pure defeat and sadness. And all the while there were the politicians that helped organize the meeting, the board of elders if you will, sitting stoically silent, letting the melee proceed in front of them unabated.
Needless to say I was surprised I won my honor bet against some random attendee resorting to his fists to prove his point.
The most disappointing thing about the whole fiasco, however, was the fact that the two sides weren’t debating healthcare reform at all. Instead the debate, from what I could discern, was over whether they should be even talking about healthcare reform to begin with.
I can understand liking the system in place—the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t I guess—but to shut down all discussion entirely is kind of befuddling to me.
I think of an 8-year-old child with his hands pressed hard against his head, shouting the national anthem because he doesn’t want to hear someone disprove his point with sound logic and reasoning.
With the meeting’s chaotic shouting as my starting point I decided to back track a bit and read up on the opinions of the major players involved in the debate to get a better idea of the issue.
So, turning to cyberspace…
On October 4, 2008, exactly one month before his Presidential win in November, Barack Obama posted on his official Twitter account that he had just spoke in Virginia about reforming America’s healthcare system. A link to a video of this speech was also posted.
In the video, the future President Obama stated that he was unsatisfied with the current healthcare system and that a government paid option may allow the United States to finally create an affordable and good healthcare option that would be available for all American citizens.
Obama concluded his speech by saying, “You have my word, I will never back down, I will never stop fighting until we have fixed our healthcare system.”
Some might consider this a bold statement on the future of American healthcare, but considering the demand, one New York Times poll found that 85 percent of the American public supported a change to the current healthcare system, others might see this call for reform as overdue.
On May 20, 2009, Obama put his plan in motion online by Tweeting a call for healthcare stories from private citizens so that he might be able to show to Congress why healthcare reform was such a pressing issue.
Predictably, with President Obama now calling for a massive reform to America’s healthcare system and also publically supporting a government run health option, two opposing sides immediately formed in Congress.
Most Democrats, again predictably, came to the President’s aid, voicing their support for a radical change.
Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd, acting chairman of the Senate committee on health, education, labor, and pensions and at one point a serious candidate to be Obama’s 2008 running mate, became extremely vocal online regarding healthcare reform, Tweeting on July 31, “My hope is that we will pass the Health Care bill so that every American can have the coverage they need.”
Earlier this summer, on June 25, Dodd posted to his Twitter account a link to a video where he discussed how thousands of Americans had lost their insurance and were now at risk, painting a rather grim picture of the American healthcare system.
Junior Senator from Colorado Michael Bennet lent his voice to the debate as well, posting a video to his Twitter account that stated that over the past few years the medium family income in the United States declined while healthcare costs had increased by 80 percent. Bennet went on to state that this change over the last few years had directly affected the American economy, leading to the current financial struggle.
Bennet then advocated for a plan that covered all Americans to help combat these costs stating, “We should cover everybody because it’s the right thing to do.”
Even Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid got into the online act, Tweeting on July 23, “On health care reform, I agree w/Obama. I want to get it right. I want to get it done promptly. We need a quality bill.”
As the Democrats ran to the side of their President, Republicans, perhaps just as predictably, voiced their opposition.
Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, known for being a rather vocal conservative stalwart in the Senate, Tweeted on August 27 that America does not need a healthcare change right now.
Earlier in the summer, Brownback had Tweeted that a change in healthcare policy would hurt both senior citizens and industry, prolonging the economic downturn.
Republican Senator from Louisiana David Vitter added his opposition to the President’s healthcare reform idea by Tweeting a link to the now famous diagram describing how Obama’s plan might work, a complex web of arrows and bubbles that resembles a handmade Chutes and Ladders game, on July 21.
The strongest Republican voice, however, has not been in the Senate but in the House. Texas Representative and trained physician Michael Burgess has time and again spoken out against Obama and the Democrat’s healthcare reform plan.
Both on his official Congressman’s Twitter account, michaelcburgess, and on the so-called House Health Care Caucus Twitter account, HealthCaucus, Burgess has listed his doubts about healthcare reform.
Burgess claims that the push for healthcare reform seems remarkably similar to President Bill Clinton’s failed attempt at universal healthcare in the mid-1990s and that a single-payer system, i.e. a government managed one, was irresponsible.
As Burgess Tweeted on July 22, “I disagree with that premise, a single payer, whether it be gov’t run or for profit insurance, only adds to the inequities already prevalent.”
However, beyond a few Congressmen who have suggested possible alternate options to Obama’s plan the vast majority of the Republican Tweets regarding healthcare reform have been hostile, supremely negative and ultimately meaningless.
Unfortunately, Democrats apparently felt threatened by these statements and many have begun to release their own negative Tweets, blog postings and video links.
See where this is going?
The pointless chaos I had witnessed at the town hall meeting I discovered was also playing out in cyberspace amongst the movers and shakers of our society.
I have not created this piece to debate healthcare reform with anyone and I am not going to add my own ideas to the already jumbled mess that is this issue—I have no health expertise and have done little economic research into the matter so don’t see why you would want my opinion on the matter anyways—instead I want you to see that the major problem here is our own divisions.
We seem to be so supremely divided upon party lines that organized debate is almost impossible.
Even an immensely important topic like…oh I don’t know… healthcare reform quickly regresses into a mash of incomprehensible calamity.
I encourage ideas and debate, for without them institutions would never be perfected or reformed, but I also encourage intelligence and understanding—the intelligence to listen to all points, and the understanding of when it’s best for the American people to concede a point and move forward.
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Tweets Referenced in Column