WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — The recurring images of rabid opponents to health care reform screaming at legislators and hurling insults at those who disagree with them is the new reality TV. Just as scripted and just as insipid.
The way the networks continuously loop videos of these town hall free-for-alls, you'd think that few people favor congressional bills that call for a national health insurance plan, among other changes to our health care system.
More likely, few people who want reform are showing up at these raucous events, and even fewer are getting air time. But protests and angry mobs make great political theater and, therefore, great TV.
Meanwhile, the facts become the litter left on the town hall floor and the White House gets amnesia. President Obama, his advisers and Cabinet members are so distracted — dare I said scared — by the noise they've forgotten that these protestors are not the people who put him in office.
So a national insurance plan — the so-called public option designed to force private insurance companies to compete and lower prices — has gone from essential to optional. Or has it? It's hard to tell. The back and forth on the issue by Mr. Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is dizzying.
Now is not the time for waffling. It's the time for leadership. President Obama must stick to his guns.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., responding to Mr. Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, lamented to an audience, "Elections have consequences."
He was right. And the public option was supposed to be a consequence of an Obama victory. In fact, it was the No. 1 item listed under Candidate Obama's plan to cover the uninsured.
Nearly 67 million people voted for the Obama/Biden ticket. It's a safe bet that a great number among that 53 percent majority — the voting bloc to whom Mr. Obama should be paying attention — wanted health care reform, and wanted it with the public option.
Is it just a coincidence that the demographic makeup of the town hall protestors and those attendees screaming, "I want my country back!" and "We're afraid of Obama!" looks the same as that of the McCain-Palin campaign rallies? The ones with "Real Americans?"
Or that many of the debates, I mean shouting matches, at these town hall forays aren't even about health care?
"We are overwhelmed by the crazies," said one reform proponent at Thursday's health care forum in Delray Beach sponsored by the Florida Alliance for Retired Americans. "How do we get heard?"
I'll bet she'd like folks to hear that the U.S. has the most expensive health care system in the world but also one of the least effective.
And that the Republican plan for health care reform — The Patients' Choice Act that offers no national insurance plan — would increase the cost of insurance and the number of uninsured, based on an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Its study says the bill is "deeply flawed."
On the other hand, a public option at Medicare rates would save $3 trillion between 2010 and 2020 and reduce the number of uninsured to 4 million by 2012, according to a study by the Commonwealth Fund.
But we can't hear these facts above the loud — and false — allegations about "death panels," "socialism," "fascism" and a "government takeover of health care." Because of these scare tactics, support for a public option — it was 76 percent of U.S. residents in polls two months ago — is slipping.
It's commonly accepted that reality TV plays loose with the facts. But that's entertainment. Health care is serious business.
Life and death serious.
It's time for reform proponents to say, "Camera on us." For the media to report the facts along with the drama. And for President Obama to fight for the change he promised, not cave to the status quo.
Rhonda Swan is an editorial writer for The Palm Beach Post. E-mail: rhonda(underscore)swan(at)pbpost.com.