A two-party system

If the recent debate over health care reform has taught us anything, it is that the U.S. does still have a functional two-party system. The two parties, however, are not the Democrats and Republicans, but the Democrats and the Democrats.

This is not to suggest that his is necessarily a bad thing—for the Democratic Party or America. The Republicans may have a substantial 41-member minority in the Senate, but being tied to their strategy of obstruction, just saying no, and refusing to cooperate or even compromise, have rendered themselves utterly and completely irrelevant. Consequently, the two teams within the Democratic Party are playing the only game in town.

It is important for democracy that there be discussion with varying viewpoints. Results do not necessarily need to be bipartisan, but the process should be. As such, single-party states are almost inherently anti-democratic; see: Franco’s Spain, the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, etc. Parties with no opposition easily fall into corruption, or, even in the best of cases, they fall into ideological stasis (run out of new ideas), because they are not challenged. In effect, a party monopoly does, in fact, resemble an economic monopoly (and the resulting maxim that competition is healthy). So, while many do support their party of choice, most also would not want their party to have absolute control. Luckily, the Democratic Party, having grown larger and more diverse due to two generous election cycles, have offered an alternate party to the Republicans, within the Republican’s old ideological space.

Democrats have generally been more comfortable than the Republicans with opposition within their own party. Sometimes this has exploded in their faces, such as when now-Senator Bob Casey, due to his opposition to abortion rights, was uninvited to speak at Clinton’s Democratic National Convention. And, perhaps, it has been a detriment in the current health care debate, as it as taken the party, which happens to enjoy substantial majorities in both the Senate and the House, over a year to finalize a health care reform bill.

Both health care reform bills passed by the Senate and the House are, in fact, bipartisan. In fact, they resemble very closely past Republican efforts. For example, can you guess who said the following?

First, even though more Americans carry health insurance than ever before, the 25 million Americans who remain uninsured often need it the most and are most unlikely to obtain it. They include many who work in seasonal or transient occupations, high-risk cases, and those who are ineligible for Medicaid despite low incomes.

…

There would be no exclusions of coverage based on the nature of the illness. For example, a person with heart disease would qualify for benefits as would a person with kidney disease.

I’ll give you a hint: His name rhymes with Prichard Dixon. In fact, his proposal—from 1974, no less—also mandated that all employers provide health insurance coverage to their employers, a mandate which was dropped early in the debate to attract support from centrist Democrats.

Now, there has been a very substantial realignment in the political spectrum since 1974. The space occupied by moderates (from both parties) has, for the most part, become overwhelming adopted by centrist or moderate Democrats. Since Republicans have refused to participate in the discussion, it is these Democrats, the so-called “Blue Dog Democrats,” which have become the second party. It is an amorphous group that is issue-dependent. For example, while Sen. Joe Lieberman may have opposed the more liberal health care proposals (despite calling for a public option, for example, during his senatorial and presidential campaigns), he is also leading the effort to repeal the ban on homosexuals openly serving in the military. The aforementioned Sen. Casey may support health insurance reform, but opposes abortion.

I’ve focused mostly on the bill passed by the Senate, and the Senate itself, because the Senate bill is the most likely to become law of the two bills. The Senate bill is basically three proposals in one, with each piece being necessary for the next. First, it prohibits insurers from declining coverage based on pre-existing conditions. Essentially, this is the crux of the bill, and especially, the most popular. However, in order to keep people from only buying insurance only when they get sick (and bankrupting the system in the process), it becomes necessary to mandate that every person carry health insurance. This is, unsurprisingly, the least popular proposal. Finally, if you are going to mandate that everybody carry insurance, you must make it affordable, which means subsidizing coverage for anybody caught between more-or-less poverty (who would be eligible for Medicaid) and having enough to afford insurance on their own.

It is, in all reality, a conservative bill: It maintains the status quo for those already covered, it recoups costs by taxing expensive insurance plans, it forces those caught between poverty and prosperity to buy into the market, while asking very little of insurance companies in return. The more liberal solutions have been dropped entirely, such as: a mandate that all employers provide coverage to employees, a publicly run option to compete with private insurers for those whose insurance is not provided already by either the government (MediCare or Medicaid) or their employer, the ability for those over 55 but not yet 65 (generally the most expensive people to cover) to buy in to Medicare at cost, or a tax on wealthier Americans to pay for the subsidies.

For better or for worse, the irresponsibility of the Republican Party has forced the Senate to run on consensus. As a result, the bill passed by the Senate is necessarily bipartisan because the only way it would pass was unanimously by both parties, the only two parties in town.