Is it possible that we're past the blind fury stage on health care, and may be getting down to a more practical approach by all sides? No guarantees, but there are signs:
- Washington Post Business columnist Pearlstein has recently outlined some reasonable ideas about what might be in a "compromise" package.
- Some people are actually trying to provide real, confirmable facts about aspects of health care and the problems we face, rather than opinions. One commendable effort is that of T.R. Reid, who's written a book, The Healing of America, about health care systems in other countries. Get the book from the amazon link in the right margin, or read his cogent piece from Sunday's Washington Post Outlook section here, in which he debunks some of the mistaken ideas people have about the Canadian, German, and other systems.
- I believe the death of Senator Ted Kennedy, longtime health care reform advocate, will have an effect on the dialogue. It won't sway a lot of Republicans out of their naysaying mode, but it may make the dialogue more civil, and it might sand some of the rough edges off some of the more extreme Democratic positions.
Even the rightwing columnist Charles Krauthammer is offering up "compromise" solutions, albeit spurious ones. Krauthammer, a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, is so one-track in his opinions that I'd seldom point anyone to something he wrote. His piece "Obamacare: The Only Exit Strategy" is no exception -- in it, he proposes that the administration "win" by abandoning all its key goals and principles and accepting a Republican version of the world -- but he does point up one reminder of how our political system operates:
Often, when important issues are at stake in the U.S., it requires a real crisis, a total logjam, to jar us and our representatives out of our complacency and make us deal with the problem. Krauthammer says we're not at that point yet, and he's correct. But really, must we wait for that point, or is it vaguely possible that with some serious thinking and a will to get the job done, we might actually succeed in throwing a switch before we have a train wreck?
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