I MAY BE wrong, but if my memory serves me correctly, wasn’t Barack Obama the person who won the US election a little over a year ago?  Wasn’t he given a mandate by the majority of Americans to put in place the agenda he outlined on the campaign trail?  And wasn’t health care reform a central pillar of that agenda?
Today, the United States Congress will be voting on what has arguably been the single most contentious domestic policy issue – or policy issue in general even – for a very long time: Health Care Reform.  The battle over the past year has often been vicious, primarily from the Republican camp, with every attempt at reaching a consensus coming out of the Obama administration being met with outright rejection.
Indeed, Republican tactics in their opposition to health care reform seem to have surpassed both the successful John Kerry ‘swift-boating’, and the unsuccessful Obama nationality, or ‘birther’, challenge.   As if the socially-engineered town hall meetings weren’t enough, Republican supporters have gone on to compare Obama to some of the worst despots in history, including Josef Stalin, the man whose regime was responsible for the deaths of millions of Russians.
With the vote imminent, Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell recently made a direct appeal, or threat rather, to his Democrat colleagues, by sounding a warning obviously designed to appeal to their basic instinct as elected officials.
“I assure you that if this bill is somehow passed, it won’t be behind our Democratic friends, it will be ahead of them because every [mid-term] election in America this fall will be a referendum on this issue. And there is an overwhelming likelihood that every Republican candidate will be campaigning to repeal it. So the issue will not be behind them, it will be ahead of them. And we are likely to have as close as we’ve ever had in this country to a national referendum on an issue.”
The term referendum is not one that is thrown about easily, particularly in America, a country which has prided itself in practising a relatively kink-free democracy.
A referendum, for those unfamiliar with the term, is a direct vote on a single issue, and usually occurs when there is some political impasse, and the normal decision-making channels are insufficient to break it.  An actual referendum is unlikely, particularly if the Bill is passed today.  At an ideal level, it would mean – to my mind – every single American citizen eligible to vote being provided with a copy of the over two-thousand (2,000)-page bill, anything short of that being already taken care of by politicians, special-interest groups, and the media.
In my opinion, there is no small amount of Republican dishonesty in the rabid opposition to health care reform, particularly when put into the context of the Grand Old Party’s actions during the George W. Bush years.  There is a presumption that people place in their elected officials, to do what is in their best interest; something that I doubt Mr. McConnell’s party has been engaged in over the past decade or so.

Quote: ‘Even after receiving a resounding mandate from the American people, Obama has had to fight hard for his health-care reform initiative, and this was with some of the best and the brightest  — Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, for example — on his side’
Pull quote 2: ‘In my opinion, what we’ve seen over the past year or so is more than just a wrangling over one issue; it has been the testing of not just American style democracy but democracy in general.  It shows that despite a clear democratic mandate, the will of the people can also be used to obstruct the good of the people’

The numbers speak for themselves.  For example, the events of September 11 saw the loss of just under three thousand (3,000) American lives, with the ‘War on Terror’ resulting in a little over an equal number (3000) of American casualties so far.  That is over a ten-year period.  The Bush Administration’s prosecutions of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq cost the American people roughly $10 billion a year, and this estimate does not include the enormous bureaucracy, that is, the post-9/11 established Department of Homeland Security.
The Obama Health Care Plan is estimated to cost a little over US$1 trillion, roughly the total cost so far of America’s two wars.  Undoubtedly, this is a lot of money, but when you consider that – according to a recent study by Harvard University – some 45,000 Americans die annually as a result of no health insurance coverage, one can see the ultimate advantage of the investment.
Today’s vote which, Obama seems likely to win after a hard-fought battle would see the lives of thousands of Americans being saved due to more accessible health insurance.  Yet I believe there is some substance to McConnell’s warning.
Even after receiving a resounding mandate from the American people, Obama has had to fight hard for his health-care reform initiative, and this was with some of the best and the brightest  — Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, for example — on his side.   Facing defeat at the national level, it is clear that the Republican Party, backed by powerful insurance industry lobbyists, is going to take the battle to the individual states, particularly during the mid-term elections scheduled for later this year.
In my opinion, what we’ve seen over the past year or so is more than just a wrangling over one issue; it has been the testing of not just American style democracy but democracy in general.  It shows that despite a clear democratic mandate, the will of the people can also be used to obstruct the good of the people.  This is something that has a resonance across democracies everywhere, including Guyana.  I am well aware that to explore an issue like this within our current political environment might be courting controversy, but there is no point in writing something that everyone will accept without question.  Therefore, next week, we take a special look at our democracy, and how we sometimes treat the will of the people.