Little Words Can Mean Death or Life

Little Words Can Mean Death or Life

"Little words can mean death or life to someone."

-Electra, in Sophocles’ tragedy, Electra.

People die who could be saved. People suffer who could recover. Those are the consequences of the private insurance-based health care system in America today.

We can reform the system at little cost and no risk to our own health, saving hundreds of thousands or millions of lives and medically treating millions more who go untreated.

I can’t write it any plainer than that. The facts are not in dispute. The U.S. ranks last in measurements of citizen health among the six top industrialized nations. So how do insurance industry hirelings (otherwise known as conservative Republicans) make their case against health care reform? How do they justify this inhuman, deadly status quo?

Conservative propagandist Frank Luntz tells them how. Lie. Am I overstating it to claim that such lies, if successful, will cause death and harm to millions? No.

In the ancient Greek tragedian Sophocles’ play from which the epigram above is drawn, Orestes justifies a deception with these "little words":

Can a mere story be evil? No of course not – so long as it pays in the end.

Is there a more concise way of defining the anti-ethic that seems to drive so much of our American political life? Is it not how the mainstream media assesses candidates and officeholders? Is it not how politicians assess themselves? Is it not what makes it possible for a nation to promote death and suffering to enrich and empower a few insurance executives and the politicians they keep in their servants’ quarters?

The story Orestes told himself – that mere stories can’t be evil – is itself evil. That’s tragic irony, of course. I believe it’s fair to label Luntz’s stories evil, without irony or exaggeration.

This last week, my colleagues, George Lakoff and Eric Haas, wrote about Luntz’s health care lies and made recommendations for framing the principles of reform. You can read that here.

Luntz suggests that opponents of reform humanize their language about health care to avoid humanizing health care.  He recommends raising unfounded fears of treatment delays in a system in which government simply plays its moral role of citizen protector. He says it should be argued that bureaucrats would destroy the patient-doctor relationship. He suggests conservatives argue for, "A balanced, common sense approach that provides assistance to those who truly need it and keeps healthcare patient-centered rather than government-centered for everyone."

As Lakoff, Haas and I argued, an American Plan will recognize that health care is part of the moral mission of government. It will cost less and do more to save lives and keep Americans healthy. Private health insurance runs administrative costs of 15 to 20 percent, with most of those costs stemming from the effort to deny treatment. An American plan can reduce that overhead to three or four percent.

Perhaps the most important difference between our approach and Luntz’s is that our principles are true. They are honest expressions of progressive values. You can read policy recommendations our values might produce in Jacob S. Hacker’s report, "Healthy Competition."

Luntz’s talking points are based on lies. The "true" value motivating Luntz and his followers is, "Profits matter more than life." They don’t dare say that, though.

At the center of the insurance industry’s argument is the claim that a national health care plan will have government bureaucrats destroying the patient-doctor relationship. In other words, we are being told to beware of bureaucrats by the completely unaccountable and invisible private insurance bureaucrats who have for decades been denying payment for sound medical care because it falls on the wrong side of their spreadsheets full of numbers.

HMOs and other private insurance schemes are governments. We just don’t get to elect them. Since the insurance industry first waded into the health care business less than a century ago, they have managed to use the government we do elect to eliminate their risks, guarantee their profits, and legalize what is nothing more than accountant-managed euthanasia.

Yes, Electra, little words can mean death or life. It is evil to use the words of life to promote a world of death.

I hope Frank Luntz will think about that. I hope the media that covers the health care debate will think about that. Winning is not a measure of morality. It can’t justify an evil story. Truth really is the best medicine.