Health care reform

Health care reform goes up for vote today in Congress. I'm not happy about the bill; I'm genuinely undecided regarding whether it would be better to continue with the status quo than to pass this bill. People who now suffer under the status quo would presumably benefit from the bill—but at the price of strengthening both the ideological privilege and the practical power exercised by the institutions that make up the "free market" in this country. And in the long run, I think that's very bad news.

Being left sucks in the U.S. because not only does it doom you to be perpetually frustrated, you don't even get to enjoy the feeling of entitlement that undergirds the fury of the right. The Tea-Party right is also frustrated right now, of course, and will go apoplectic if the health care reform bill passes. But their feeling of disenfranchisement is in large part a cherished, self-fabricated fiction—yes, they may end up being outvoted this time around, but they enjoy the support of powerful institutions, and that makes them a constant threat, a force to be reckoned with. By contrast, if you're someone on the left who wants to see the U.S. adopt a publicly funded single-payer health care system—there's no one in power who seriously entertains that notion. You're not a force to be reckoned with; you're a pipe dreamer.

Without a public option, health care reform is throwing us all to the wolves of free enterprise. My sensibilities and ideals on this matter have been shaped by statements such as these:

It is not given that one person should possess more than another; for this reason, the world lies in sin. (D&C 49:20)

If you are not equal in earthly things, you cannot be equal in obtaining heavenly things. (D&C 78:6)

This is the way that I, the Lord, have decreed to provide for my saints: that the poor shall be exalted, in that the rich are made low. (D&C 104:16)

The fiercest opponents of health care reform—the ones waxing hysterical about socialism and raging that no one's entitled to free handouts—are devotees of a false gospel. The most generous thing that can be said for them is that they have been blinded by human craftiness and by false traditions inherited from their forebears; a much less generous reading is that they are hard-hearted and wicked. It appalls me how many Latter-day Saints appear to fall into that camp.

And then we have this health care reform bill, which I guess if I'm going to be generous represents a kind of terrestrial approach to the problem—not telestial, but still reflective of a lesser set of ideals. Too much faith in the market, too much faith in a system that's ultimately predicated, as Adam Smith and Milton Friedman shamelessly proclaimed, on the pursuit of self-interest. Why are the people of my country so . . . blind? I'm trying to phrase it generously again.

The Book of Mormon is saturated with this kind of frustration, which has a lot to do with why that book speaks to me.

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God of justice,
Life of the world,
Builder of Zion,
Defender of the poor,
Painbearer, Deliverer—

I don't know whether to pray for this bill to succeed.
I know I don't want the political right to succeed,
and while it's risky and presumptuous of me,
I'm confident that you don't either.

I'm frustrated to the point of feeling drained and weary.
Just—let some good come out of this process.
Some kind of progress, however small.

How do we change hearts?
How do we convince people of the truth?
How do we arouse their consciences?
Help us proclaim your gospel effectively.
Help us change hearts and minds and values.
Help us dispel ignorance and falsehood
Help us promote true gospel values in the face of counterfeits.

In Christ's name, amen.