“Where Is The Love?”: Compassion Isn’t A Sign Of Weakness, But A Mark Of Civilization
When I’ve written recently about food stamp recipients, the uninsured and prison inmates, I’ve had plenty of pushback from readers.
A reader named Keith reflected a coruscating chorus when he protested: “If kids are going hungry, it is because of the parents not upholding their responsibilities.”
A reader in Washington bluntly suggested taking children from parents and putting them in orphanages.
Jim asked: “Why should I have to subsidize someone else’s child? How about personal responsibility? If you procreate, you provide.”
After a recent column about an uninsured man who delayed seeing a doctor about a condition that turned out to be colon cancer, many readers noted that he is a lifelong smoker and said he had it coming.
“What kind of a lame brain doofus is this guy?” one reader asked. “And like it’s our fault that he couldn’t afford to have himself checked out?”
Such scorn seems widespread, based on the comments I get on my blog and Facebook page — as well as on polling and on government policy. At root, these attitudes reflect a profound lack of empathy.
A Princeton University psychology professor, Susan Fiske, has found that when research subjects hooked up to neuro-imaging machines look at photos of the poor and homeless, their brains often react as if they are seeing things, not people. Her analysis suggests that Americans sometimes react to poverty not with sympathy but with revulsion.
So, on Thanksgiving, maybe we need a conversation about empathy for fellow humans in distress.
Let’s acknowledge one point made by these modern social Darwinists: It’s true that some people in poverty do suffer in part because of irresponsible behavior, from abuse of narcotics to criminality to laziness at school or jobs. But remember also that many of today’s poor are small children who have done nothing wrong.
Some 45 percent of food stamp recipients are children, for example. Do we really think that kids should go hungry if they have criminal parents? Should a little boy not get a curved spine treated properly because his dad is a deadbeat? Should a girl not be able to go to preschool because her mom is an alcoholic?
Successful people tend to see in themselves a simple narrative: You study hard, work long hours, obey the law and create your own good fortune. Well, yes. That often works fine in middle-class families.
But if you’re conceived by a teenage mom who drinks during pregnancy so that you’re born with fetal alcohol effects, the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against you from before birth. You’ll perhaps never get traction.
Likewise, if you’re born in a high-poverty neighborhood to a stressed-out single mom who doesn’t read to you and slaps you more than hugs you, you’ll face a huge handicap. One University of Minnesota study found that the kind of parenting a child receives in the first 3.5 years is a better predictor of high school graduation than I.Q.
All this helps explain why one of the strongest determinants of ending up poor is being born poor. As Warren Buffett puts it, our life outcomes often depend on the “ovarian lottery.” Sure, some people transcend their circumstances, but it’s callous for those born on second or third base to denounce the poor for failing to hit home runs.
John Rawls, the brilliant 20th-century philosopher, argued for a society that seems fair if we consider it from behind a “veil of ignorance” — meaning we don’t know whether we’ll be born to an investment banker or a teenage mom, in a leafy suburb or a gang-ridden inner city, healthy or disabled, smart or struggling, privileged or disadvantaged. That’s a shrewd analytical tool — and who among us would argue for food stamp cuts if we thought we might be among the hungry children?
As we celebrate Thanksgiving, let’s remember that the difference between being surrounded by a loving family or being homeless on the street is determined not just by our own level of virtue or self-discipline, but also by an inextricable mix of luck, biography, brain chemistry and genetics.
For those who are well-off, it may be easier to castigate the irresponsibility of the poor than to recognize that success in life is a reflection not only of enterprise and willpower, but also of random chance and early upbringing.
Low-income Americans, who actually encounter the needy in daily life, understand this complexity and respond with empathy. Researchers say that’s why the poorest 20 percent of Americans donate more to charity, as a fraction of their incomes, than the richest 20 percent. Meet those who need help, especially children, and you become less judgmental and more compassionate.
And compassion isn’t a sign of weakness, but a mark of civilization.
By: Nicholas D. Kristof, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, November 27, 2013
“The Neocons Are Losing”: Warmongers Are Howling At The Moon
I liked former New Republic writer Dana Milbank’s column this morning about how “Republicans mindlessly oppose Iran Nuclear Deal.” I liked it not just because it was witty, but because its prominence in the Washington Post—and its place when I woke up near the top of its list of the most popular stories—suggests that in this latest fracas over foreign policy, the conventional wisdom, as well as public opinion, is on the side of liberal internationalism rather than neo-conservative war-mongering. That this time it is the Bill Kristols and Ari Fleischers and Marco Rubios who are howling at the moon.
That’s especially important because in this case, there is an underlying truth—an emperor without any clothes, an elephant in the room—that no one in the administration or in the Republican opposition wants to openly acknowledge. It goes something like this: We all want Iran to abandon its quest for nuclear weapons, and we hope that through sanctions and negotiations, and the threat of war, we can achieve that result. But we Americans also know that if negotiations fail, then war may not be a real option. As the debate over intervention in Syria showed, the American public is not eager to go to war in the Middle East when the United States itself is not in danger. The Obama administration would have a hell of a time carrying out its threat. And even if it did, it would have a hell of a time achieving its objective of knocking out Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
So the various politicians and pundits who called for upping the sanctions as the interim deal was being negotiated, and who now denounce the deal as being woefully inadequate are doing a particular disservice. On one level, they are calling for war, which is the only alternative if we don’t pursue diplomacy. But on another level—if you consider the political and strategic difficulty, in this case of war—they are calling for a shutdown of our foreign policy—for the kind of national embarrassment and blow to our global standing from which we were saved in Syria by the Russians. So three cheers for Dana Milbank and for the good sense of the American people and the old foreign policy establishment of the Scowcrofts, Albrights, and Brzezinskis.
By: John B. Judis, The New Republic, November 26, 2013
“Are The Obamacare Clouds Breaking?”: Love It Or Hate It, Obamacare Is Here To Stay
This morning, I was listening to NPR—because yeah, I’m an effete pointy-headed liberal and that’s how I roll—and I heard a story about people in California who got insurance cancellation notices, but then wound up getting better coverage and couldn’t be happier about it. And the other day there was this story in The Washington Post about droves of poor people in rural Kentucky getting insurance for the first time in their lives—free, through Medicaid—because of the Affordable Care Act. In other words, after spending weeks telling the tales of people losing their health coverage (who in truth could get other health coverage), the media are finally putting at least some attention on the people who are benefiting from the ACA.
And encouraging news seems to be breaking out all over. Ezra Klein and Evan Soltas ask, “Is Obamacare Turning the Corner?”, noting that Healthcare.gov seems to be working pretty well, at least on the front end. States with well-functioning web sites like New York and California are meeting or exceeding their enrollment targets. Steve Benen concurs on the corner-turning interpretation. Kevin Drum argues that “Getting Obamacare to the end zone wasn’t easy, and Obama almost fumbled the ball at the one-yard line, but he’s finally won. There’s nothing left for conservatives to do. Love it or hate it, Obamacare is here to stay.”
That isn’t to say that there aren’t lots of problems left to be sorted out. Nor is it to say that the media are done with Obamacare “horror” stories. For instance, last night, NBC News aired this story about employers moving to more modest plans to avoid the “Cadillac tax” on high-cost health plans, complete with disgruntled employees. The piece didn’t bother to explore why an employer might choose a plan for 2014 based on a tax that doesn’t take effect until 2018, other than including a quote from a health-industry consultant claiming that employers “are going to have to get ready for it now,” which makes no sense at all. Think there might be a story there about companies making a decision to scale back benefits and save money but just blaming it on Obamacare? Maybe?
Anyhow, it does appear that we’re starting to edge toward a more balanced media discussion of the successes and failures of this law. I’ll stick to the prediction I’ve made for some time, that the law will be fine. When that December 1 deadline for fixing the website comes, reporters will find that it’s not perfect, but it’s pretty good. In the medium term, the law will do a lot of good for a lot of people, but it won’t transform America into a health care paradise, nor will it drag us into a nightmare of communist oppression. It will have problems, most of which will get sorted out. And the political impact? That will probably be something of a wash as well. Republicans will still be able to go to their conservative constituents and say, “I fought against Obamacare!” as proof of their right-wing bona fides. Democrats will still be able to go to their constituents and say they made it so nobody would get rejected for insurance because of a pre-existing condition. Eventually, Republicans will find something else to shout about.
And who knows, maybe these kinds of problems getting fixed will create a new narrative of success around the ACA: Despite terrible obstacles and mistakes, the administration found its way and delivered for the American people, redeeming liberalism in the process! Weirder things have happened.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, November 26, 2013
“California, Here We Come?”: If Obamacare Can Work For 38 Million People In California, It Can Work For America
It goes without saying that the rollout of Obamacare was an epic disaster. But what kind of disaster was it? Was it a failure of management, messing up the initial implementation of a fundamentally sound policy? Or was it a demonstration that the Affordable Care Act is inherently unworkable?
We know what each side of the partisan divide wants you to believe. The Obama administration is telling the public that everything will eventually be fixed, and urging Congressional Democrats to keep their nerve. Republicans, on the other hand, are declaring the program an irredeemable failure, which must be scrapped and replaced with … well, they don’t really want to replace it with anything.
At a time like this, you really want a controlled experiment. What would happen if we unveiled a program that looked like Obamacare, in a place that looked like America, but with competent project management that produced a working website?
Well, your wish is granted. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you California.
Now, California isn’t the only place where Obamacare is looking pretty good. A number of states that are running their own online health exchanges instead of relying on HealthCare.gov are doing well. Kentucky’s Kynect is a huge success; so is Access Health CT in Connecticut. New York is doing O.K. And we shouldn’t forget that Massachusetts has had an Obamacare-like program since 2006, put into effect by a guy named Mitt Romney.
California is, however, an especially useful test case. First of all, it’s huge: if a system can work for 38 million people, it can work for America as a whole. Also, it’s hard to argue that California has had any special advantages other than that of having a government that actually wants to help the uninsured. When Massachusetts put Romneycare into effect, it already had a relatively low number of uninsured residents. California, however, came into health reform with 22 percent of its nonelderly population uninsured, compared with a national average of 18 percent.
Finally, the California authorities have been especially forthcoming with data tracking the progress of enrollment. And the numbers are increasingly encouraging.
For one thing, enrollment is surging. At this point, more than 10,000 applications are being completed per day, putting the state well on track to meet its overall targets for 2014 coverage. Just imagine, by the way, how different press coverage would be right now if Obama officials had produced a comparable success, and around 100,000 people a day were signing up nationwide.
Equally important is the information on who is enrolling. To work as planned, health reform has to produce a balanced risk pool — that is, it must sign up young, healthy Americans as well as their older, less healthy compatriots. And so far, so good: in October, 22.5 percent of California enrollees were between the ages of 18 and 34, slightly above that group’s share of the population.
What we have in California, then, is a proof of concept. Yes, Obamacare is workable — in fact, done right, it works just fine.
The bad news, of course, is that most Americans aren’t lucky enough to live in states in which Obamacare has, in fact, been done right. They’re stuck either with HealthCare.gov or with one of the state exchanges, like Oregon’s, that have similar or worse problems. Will they ever get to experience successful health reform?
The answer is, probably yes. There won’t be a moment when the clouds suddenly lift, but the exchanges are gradually getting better — a point inadvertently illustrated a few days ago by John Boehner, the speaker of the House. Mr. Boehner staged a publicity stunt in which he tried to sign up on the D.C. health exchange, then triumphantly posted an entry on his blog declaring that he had been unsuccessful. At the bottom of his post, however, is a postscript admitting that the health exchange had called back “a few hours later,” and that he is now enrolled.
And maybe the transaction would have proceeded faster if Mr. Boehner’s office hadn’t, according to the D.C. exchange, put its agent — who was calling to help finish the enrollment — on hold for 35 minutes, listening to “lots of patriotic hold music.”
There will also probably be growing use of workarounds — for example, encouraging people to go directly to insurers. This will temporarily defeat one of the purposes of the exchanges, which was to make price comparisons easy, but it will be good enough as a short-term patch. And one shouldn’t forget that the insurance industry has a big financial stake in the success of Obamacare, and will soon be pitching in with big efforts to sign people up.
Again, Obamacare’s rollout was a disaster. But in California we can see what health reform will look like, beyond the glitches. And it’s going to work.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, November 24, 2013
“With Every Waking Moment”: Republicans Seeing The World Through An ACA Lens
On Saturday night, for the first time in a generation, the West and Iran reached a diplomatic breakthrough. Love the deal or hate it, the agreement on Iran’s nuclear program was a historic development with sweeping international implications.
Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas), an 11-year veteran of the institution and the second most powerful Republican in the chamber, immediately turned to Twitter: “Amazing what WH will do to distract attention from O-care.”
I kept waiting for the “just kidding, folks” follow-up, which never came. The Republican leader wasn’t mocking the caricature of unhinged GOP lawmakers; he’d become the caricature of unhinged GOP lawmakers. Indeed, as the notoriety of Cornyn’s message spread, he added, “Isn’t it true that WH are masters of distraction?”
It’s unsettling, of course, when powerful congressional leaders approach foreign policy with all the seriousness of a right-wing blog’s comments section, but it was even more disappointing when CBS’s Bob Schieffer asked House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on “Face the Nation” yesterday:
“You know, I was on airplanes this weekend, and more than one person I was talking to about this whole deal pending with Iran, and they were saying, this might be a diversionary tactic by the administration, which is desperately looking for good news. Would you put it in that category yet?”
Why lend credence to such silly conspiracy theories? The international diplomacy, involving major world powers, involved months of behind-the-scenes talks. Why would any serious person perceive this as a domestic political ploy, intended to “distract” or “divert” attention from a health care website that’s slowly improving?
The answer, I suspect, is that Republicans and much of the political establishment has become preoccupied with the Affordable Care Act in ways that are hard to defend.
Late last week, for example, National Review’s Jonathan Strong published an interesting piece, explaining why the Republican response to the “nuclear option” was muted: “Harry Reid may have detonated a nuclear bomb, but Senate Republicans don’t want a war if it would distract from the disastrous Obamacare rollout, senior GOP aides say.”
As hard as this may be to believe, many Capitol Hill Republicans believe Senate Democrats rebelled against obstructionism, not to improve the confirmation process, but to shift the focus from “Obamacare” and bait Republicans into a big fight that has nothing to do with health care.
Naturally, then, when months of diplomacy resulted in a deal with Iran, Republicans once more assumed this, too, must relate to the health care law – because “Obamacare” is the prism through which all light shines.
The obsession has reached farcical levels and it’s well past time for a reality-check. To think that every development, everywhere, is some kind of ploy related to health.gov is to lose all sense of reason. Democrats are heavily invested in improving Americans’ health care security, but it doesn’t dominate their every waking moment.
I don’t seriously expect Republicans to end their crusade against moderate health care law first championed by Mitt Romney, but a little perspective is clearly in order.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, November 25, 2013
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