Health Care/Joan Retsinas

Pragmatism: the New Order Mantra

Pragmatism. We have a pragmatic President who needs a pragmatic citizenry, one that distinguishes long-term aims from the present nightmare of recovery. A new mantra: populist pragmatism.

So, to twist John Kennedy’s plea, ask not what your country can do for you, but what you — liberal, moderate, right-wing, left-wing, black, white, brown, multi-hued, multi-labeled — can do for this hurting country, rising from the ashes of a dictatorial ignoramus-in-chief.

So please take pragmatism as your mantra.

While the virus rages, wear a mask. The CDC reports that masks not only protect others from you, but you from others. Most states now at last mandate masks; the holdouts — bound by ideology more than common sense — hesitated. Prodded by the president-that-was, those states turned masks into a political statement: free people scorn them. That is silly: only people with a deep-seated death-wish, coupled with a death-wish for others, scorn them. So wherever you live, put one on. When you enter stores with unmasked staff, leave, and explain your exit. When you see a customer unmasked, speak to a manager. “Mask-shaming” is OK if it keeps the hospital censuses down.

Take a break from large parties. The data emphasize the dangers in the gatherings that make the holidays fun. You can celebrate a slew of holidays once we have tamped down the virus, distributed the vaccine.

Do all those preventive actions that the physicians urge: get a flu shot. Lose extra pounds. Exercise. Take the medications you are supposed to take. Your task: stay healthy in the midst of a pandemic.

Support President Biden’s endeavors to save the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare. For many progressives, it is not ideal; in an ideal world, we would pass a single-payer plan, akin to Medicare for All. But this is a truncated world, where almost half of the country voted their conservative bent. If the man intent to destroy Obamacare had won the election, we would be going down that grim road. As is, we elected a man who, with Rep. Nancy Pelosi, marshaled Obamacare through a Congress that was not gung-ho. Support and applaud this new administration’s actions to shore up Obamacare. With so many Americans sick, so many unemployed, so many uninsured, we need to keep Obamacare. We need to prod states to expand Medicaid. We need to make sure that the money for uninsured Americans in the CARES Act remains, to pay for hospital expenses.

Ultimately, we may wrench from Congress a public option. Support that. Administratively, it is feasible. In time, enrollment in a public option will surely grow; in time we may morph into an almost single-payer system. Indeed, if you aggregate government moneys that support public employees, the military, CHAMPUS, Medicaid, and Medicare, Uncle Sam is already a mega-insurer.

I agree that there are ideal-world options. But when you start to press this president for the ideal-world agenda, remember the voting statistics: the country is sharply divided. Indeed, while President Trump’s cry of “socialism” did not alarm those Americans who thought of Denmark, it frightened voters who thought of Venezuela. We have a president who learned the art of compromise in 40 years of government; we need also to accept compromise.

Lobby states and municipalities for change. We learned from these pandemic-months the power of states to shape policies, as governors took markedly different stances to lockdowns, to opening schools, to distributing money. States will be key in distributing the vaccine. Maybe we cannot turn the Senate “blue” from “red,” but we can move state legislatures to a purpler hue.

Finally, enjoy the day. We are a free society that rejected an aspiring tyrant. We let voters decide; and voters in the end chose decency and pragmatism - not by a wide margin, but by enough.

Joan Retsinas is a sociologist who writes about health care in Providence, R.I. Email retsinas@verizon.net.

From The Progressive Populist, December 15, 2020

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