Getting to Yes
Brian Gilmore on Why Obama Will Win on Health Care
2009-09-14
By Brian Gilmore

Of all the books law students read when they matriculate through that majestic place called “law school,” the most famous of all might be “Getting to Yes” by Roger Fisher and William Ury. The book is actually called “Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In.”  It is a book about how deals are made, by lawyers, lawmakers, and all kinds of other folks (all of us) everyday.

“Getting to Yes” is on my mind because President Barack Obama is about to “get to yes” on health care reform and the Republicans know it. This is why their efforts to stop the new law has been reduced to heckling, name-calling, and arguments which urge the parties who are in control of the debate, to start over on the issue. Of course, it is all nonsense.

It is apparent that Obama is about to “get to yes” on this issue precisely because of these reactions too. We all know when someone is losing, they usually are observed doing a few mindless tactics: one, you try to stop the game; two, you try to badmouth the person who is winning the game, and/or three, you withdraw from the game, go into the stands and start heckling. It is human nature.

The GOP got deeper into heckling mode during Obama’s speech with their unofficial heckler, South Carolina Congressmen, Joseph Wilson at Obama’s congressional speech. But though Wilson screamed out “you lie” during Obama’s speech before Congress, other Republicans and their supporters are doing the same as Wilson in different ways, from afar.

But this has been the program by the GOP since the game began: they aren’t trying to play the legislative game; they want to end the game.  That is what the town hall lunacy was about and the talk radio show punditry of Rush Limbaugh and others. Everything is about simply stopping the game by yelling from the cheap seats.

The other tactic is name-calling or badmouthing Mr. Obama. We have all been here as well.  Everyday, Mr. Obama is called a “socialist” by someone even though there isn’t a chance he is a socialist.  Michael Harrington, the late great American socialist, is somewhere laughing about this allegation and about the fact that Americans think socialism is like the AIDS virus or e-coli. 

But fact is 83 million Americans right now are covered very well by government health insurance through Medicaid, Medicare, VA, and the SCHIPS program. That is almost 30 percent of the population.  Some of these folks were at the town hall meetings screaming that the government needs to remain out of our lives. Oh, really?

In 1934, the government created an agency called the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) whose sole function became providing home ownership opportunities for thousands of white Americans.  It was a hugely successful program and one of the main reasons why we have beautiful suburban cities all across the nation.

These two areas of government provided service – health care and financing assistance for housing - are just two examples of socialism in the U.S.  There are other areas as well. But, more importantly, no one who gets treatment through these government health insurance programs is turning down the treatment. No one who now owns a home because FHA backed the loan for their home with currency is giving their house back to the government either.

The final tactic of the GOP, and the most ridiculous, is the notion put forth by conservative and Republican commentators that Mr. Obama should start over because he is losing.  The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol is the latest pundit to roll out this strategy.  Here is Kristol writing in The Washington Post, the day after the speech:

“The real ‘public option’ is to scrap the current grandiose plans and to start over. There is no health care crisis, and doing no harm is far preferable to doing real damage to a good health care system.”

One has to question Kristol’s credibility with these lines. First, the health care reform law that will likely pass will be a law that will probably lack a public option and other goodies. It is hardly grandiose but it looks like Obama will take it so he can claim victory and bring a few real reforms to an inhumane system. 

Second, does Kristol know that in 2007 and 2008, 90 million people did not have any health care coverage at some point of those years? This he calls a “good health care system.”

The other real flaw with Kristol’s urgings for Obama to scrap this plan and start over is the fact that Obama is about to “get to yes.” Every congressional committee with oversight responsibility over health care reform has passed a bill except the Senate finance committee. And the passage of a bill by that committee is imminent.

The Democrats, despite being beat up at the town hall meetings, the intense lobbying by insurance companies, and other lowdown tactics they have had to overcome, will be bringing a health care reform bill to the floors of the House and Senate before the end of the year, for a vote.  If it contains most of what Barack Obama asked for when he spoke before Congress, he will sign that bill into law.  This is why Kristol’s statement is illogical.

Kristol and some Republicans want the team in the lead to quit. It is as if they would tell Tiger Woods, you are going to win the Masters, you are up 5 strokes; so Tiger, quit now while you are ahead because you wanted to win by 10 strokes and do it without hitting any bogeys.

However, in the end, it is really about “getting to yes” and Bill Kristol and all the other opponents of this effort, know it. Barack Obama is poised to sign a historic health care reform bill and that is all that counts. Obama will get the signing ceremony and the photo of it on the front page of the New York Times.

Is the bill a compromise?

Every law of this magnitude in the history of the United States has been a compromise. Remember, the subtitle of the book, “Getting to Yes,” is “negotiating agreement without giving in.” Barack Obama is about to “get to yes” precisely because he understands what that means