Some conservatives
have complained
The
country faces questions about the
appropriate level of government involvement
in the economy and other aspects of life. Cries of “socialism” are not new when
the government tries helping non-corporate middle America and the poor.
The 1936 Republican presidential nominee, Kansas Governor Alf Landon, attacked Social
Security
as “socialism” (Franklin
Roosevelt won the Electoral College, 523-8).
New York Governor Al
Smith, the 1928
Democratic presidential nominee, wrote that year, “The
cry of socialism has been patented by the powerful interests that desire to put
a damper on progressive legislation. Is this cry of socialism anything new?...
I have heard it raised by reactionary elements and the Republican Party … for
over a quarter-century.”
Many
Americans who never thought
they’d seek or accept government assistance
found themselves doing just that under the unprecedented circumstances the
pandemic wrought. The pandemic exposed flaws in our
healthcare and food supply systems. What happens when the
pandemic ends? Is
the kind of government assistance provided in connection with the pandemic an
outlier or are significant policy changes on the horizon?
Will
the nation remedy these weaknesses in our health care system
with new measures addressing some of the systemic shortcomings
that made the coronavirus situation worse? Or, will the “socialism” objections prevail
and keep the status quo in place?
Harry Truman’s 1945 health
care
proposal was defeated in
large measure by the American Medical
Association’s labeling of the legislation as “socialized medicine.” Things have changed. A recent Reuters/Ipsos
poll showed over 70 percent of respondents favoring universal health care.
That Old
Definitional Issue
When
opponents leveled charges that Franklin
Roosevelt’s New Deal
programs
were “socialism,” he said in his 1936
State of the Union Address that the proper role of government
was “the adjustment of burdens, the help of the needy, and the protection of
the people’s property.”
This year, Democratic
presidential candidates Bernie
Sanders and Elizabeth
Warren presented safety net programs aimed at assuring
more Americans better access to health care,
child care,
and
other services. They proposed Medicare-for-All, a federal guarantee of health
insurance mandated for everyone that would replace private health insurance. Other
candidates, including presumptive
Democratic nominee Joe Biden,
also proposed expanded health insurance plans, though not Medicare-for-All.
In
light of the virus experience, must we adopt measures that seem like
“socialism?” The pandemic exposed three particular shortcomings in the health
care system. First,
many Americans don’t have insurance
coverage, meaning they couldn’t get
adequate treatment if infected. Second, the lack of health care puts some groups
at greater risk. Louisiana, for example, became an
early coronavirus “hot spot”
because so many of its low-income citizens, most of the people of color, had
limited access to health care before the virus hit. They suffered from medical
conditions – hypertension,
diabetes,
obesity
- that made death more likely upon contracting the virus. Finally,
health
care workers faced massive shortages of equipment and supplies.
Theodore
Roosevelt, the 26th president, responding to
charges he was a capitalism obstructionist and opponent of individualism,
wrote, “Ruin faces us ... if we permit ourselves to be misled into refusing to
exert the common power of the community where only collectively action can do
what individualism has left undone or can remedy the wrongs done by an
unrestricted and ill-regulated individualism.”
What
Will Americans Accept? What do they Want?
Post
pandemic life in America probably will look different than life before March
2020. Until we get a
coronavirus vaccine,
limits on large gatherings and close personal contact will likely remain necessary.
Many won’t like that (sports fans?), but they’ll probably accept it in exchange
for re-starting the economy. But what about political changes? How much government will Americans accept or
desire?
Democrats
flipped the House of Representatives in 2018, relying on
health care as a way of attracting suburban women and people of color. The
pandemic assures the push for improved health coverage will play a central role
in the 2020
campaign and in the next session
of Congress. Once the emergency ends, will Republican resistance to expanded
health insurance fade? We don’t know.
Many
Democrats will seek a larger
What
about unemployment
insurance? That’s
mostly funded by taxes on employers. In light of the record number of
unemployment claims, will
political and business leaders agree on a different
way of funding that
system? Would using general revenue and assessing higher taxes for that purpose
make sense? Debating the issue seems reasonable now.
The
Most Vulnerable
Many
of these questions center on what America does about issues faced for the first
time by middle-class people. How much “socialism” will they accept or want?
That’s a political question on
which the spotlight will fall in the months ahead. Another issue, however, lurks beneath
the surface. America has a population for whom the
issues raised by the pandemic were not new. They live with them every day and
have for a long time.
For this group, health insurance
often doesn’t exist. Visits to doctors don’t happen except in the direst
emergencies. Trips to food banks occur regularly, something
middle-class people recently experienced for the first time. These most
at-risk Americans need a voice in the political debate about “socialism.” Over
the next few months, in this space, we intend to give it to them.
