Just as you and I have largely failed to understand the terror, the fear of death, that underlies this debate in the minds of so many, the leadership of the reform effort has also failed to understand it, and failed to lead not just in practical terms, but in rhetorical ones. If you did not know what something called "The Public Option" was, you might instinctively oppose it.
Option? My health care is now optional? Doesn't that mean it can go away somehow? Doesn't that mean that when I need it, it won't be there? Doesn't that mean somebody is trying to take it away from me? And this insurance that might go away is public? I'm giving control to the government somehow? No "private?" Just "public?"
And so, in seconds, with mental reflexes as acute and natural as any mechanism of "fight-or-flight", something that will expand health care and reduce its cost, something that will help fight death and pain becomes misunderstood as exactly the opposite. You can blame the one doing the misunderstanding all you want. But the essence of communication is reducing the chance of misunderstanding. And the term "The Public Option" has been as useless and as full of holes and as self-defeating as has been the term "Global Warming." It is political-speak. It is legalese. It is designed not for the recipient but for the speaker. It is the ego of the informed, strutting down the street and saying "look at me, I talk smart."
Just as "global warming" is really "bad climate change,"
"The Public Option" is in broad essence "Medicare For Everybody." Frame it that way, sell it that way, and suddenly it doesn't sound like a threat, turning the seemingly solid insurance which people have now, into something "optional" and turning anything "private" into everything "public."
Once you said "Medicare For Everybody," there would be just as much to explain. If you were under 65 you'd be paying for it. You wouldn't have to buy it. You wouldn't have to change from whatever you have now. There are just as many caveats.
Still, the intent of all this would be clearer. Much of the criticism of health care reform is coming from those who have or are about to get Medicare and, in confusion, in fear, in the kind of indescribable realization that we are far closer to the end than to the beginning, they are suddenly mortally afraid that health care reform will take it away from them. "Medicare For Everybody," might not be literally true, but instead of terrifying, it would be reassuring. And the explanations and the caveats would be listened to, and not shouted down, as anger and fear -- fear, remember, of death - swell up inside.
linkOlbermann gave reform a huge boost tonight.