Nerdiest. Post. Ever.

3/23/10

How The Healthcare Battle Was Like The Seventh Harry Potter Book:

- Both were long and drawn out until the very end, when everything happened all at once.

- There was a huge period where both were stuck in the woods wandering around aimlessly (this would have been during last summer for the healthcare battle, for those of you that care to remember those months where the only news seemed to be of the main characters in the debate yelling at each other in town halls and on cable news shows, much as Harry, Ron and Hermione bickered petulantly amongst themselves in the woods for like 100 pages).

- All seems lost, right before the good guys make a comeback (Harry “dies,” Scott Brown is elected to Ted Kennedy’s old seat).

- The forces of darkness gain popularity and terrorize the masses with blatant misrepresentations of the truth (Death Panels! Government Takeover of 1/6 of the Economy! The Democrats Want to Kill Your Grandma! Vs. Only Purebloods Can Do Magic! Muggles Should Be Killed Or Made To Do Wizards’ Bidding!).

- Compare Neville’s rallying of his troops from Dumbledore’s Army in the room of requirement, where he makes a good case for going down trying to stop Voldemort rather than cutting and running, with Obama’s last meeting with house democrats, where he pretty much told them that some of them might get thrown out of office for voting for this bill, but that once in a while people get a chance do something that generations have tried and failed to do, and that they should pay more attention to their ideals, hopes and dreams, and less attention to the polls and their chances of re-election in the fall.

- In the final showdown, with the help of unlikely allies (Bart Stupak’s bloc of pro-life democrats; the house elves and the centaurs), the heroes vanquish and expose the cowardice of the bad guys while appealing to our highest values and the better angels of our nature. Harry banishes Voldemort with the forces of love and friendship, integrity and courage behind his final spell. Barack Obama and the Democrats in the end made their appeal to the American people on the grounds that they would be helping millions of the downtrodden, the poorest and sickest among us, who have suffered mostly in silence for years. They also started explicitly arguing that by obstructing, obfuscating, and doing their damnedest to kill the healthcare bill, the Republicans were against helping the estimated 32 million (!!!) people that will now have access to health insurance; against helping the people who got sick and found their policies rescinded by their insurance companies because of trivial clerical errors; against saving untold thousands of lives (and dollars) by providing preventive care to people, instead of emergency care for problems that could have been caught and treated sooner. Republicans shouting that they’re going to repeal the bill will now have to take away the health insurance from these 32 million newly empowered people. To them (the Republicans) I say, in a voice laced with sarcasm, incredulity, and just a bit of hard-earned smugness: “Good Luck.”

- Both in the end cleared the way for many a tame denouement, where people are free to go to bed unworried that they or their loved ones are about to be killed by Deatheaters, or by treatable illnesses that they don’t have the money to pay the hospital bills for.

*fin*

Words cannot express the deep, shivering giddy happiness I felt when I got back to my site on Sunday and found out that healthcare was finally, after fourteen months of hurdles, stumbles and near-death experiences, going to pass. I welled up reading the NYTimes Article on Sunday night(just like I did when I got to the end of the Harry Potter series in Spanish last month). Whenever I next find myself in a bar, I’m going to toast to all those 32 million people, as well as to my country and its leaders, especially the one I spent two solid months of my life campaigning for, who in the end managed to do what no one in the 60+ years since FDR started trying had been able to do: make healthcare a right, and not a privilege.