American Political Science

Introduction

The political culture of a country refers s to the sets of widely shared traditions and norms concerning the way in which economic and social life should be conducted. This political culture defines the relationships between the state and the citizen. In American political culture, there are similarly many shared beliefs and norms. Concerning healthcare, the American culture has always assumed the availability of healthcare as a basic fundamental right to all citizens. In the wake of the proposed ‘Obamacare” Bill that sought to actualize this shared tradition across North America, there have emerged various events that shaped the overall outcome of the policy. The different levels of inputs and stages form the body of this essay.

American Political Values

The various American values concerning healthcare in their own country has largely been pessimistic. The ratings of America as 36th behind Cuba in infant mortality rates and 29th in life expectancy are some of the indicators of the state of the health sector and the corresponding attitude adopted by most Americans. Most of Americans have accepted the fact that they live in a society plagued by a degenerate health care system that would be virtually impossible to resurrect. The civil society has also been largely silent on the dismal state of the health care system even though they are vocal in other aspects.

Members of the American society have displayed an open hostility towards taxing their incomes to provide universal health care for their fellow underprivileged members. The different representatives of the citizens within the government have taken a back seat when health matters were raised signaling reluctance by the top brass to engage in medical policy wars with the stakeholders. Efforts by former presidents such as Bill Clinton to make health care affordable and available were defeated indicating the denial by a large part of the electorate (Marino 45).

The value of political tolerance is also quite dominant in American citizens. The American democracy is based on being able to tolerate other people’s opinions and actions. Majority of them believe in the freedom of speech as well as other liberties. However, different political groups also go to great lengths to deny others certain political rights for example the silent tussles between the liberals and conservatives that have been brought out in the Republicans and the Democrats over the Obamacare policies. There is also a growing trend in the American values to include mistrust of the government. Americans have developed an attitude that assumes the state cannot cater to their needs. Alongside the mistrust, there is a drop in the political efficacy as most citizens assume the government is too extravagant and wasteful.

The distortion of the term “American values” to assume that it will translate into organizational structures has lead to a group of citizens who profess to defending liberty and freedom as well as other values but at the same time, being skeptic of plans to introduce public health insurance for all citizens. The freedom of choice rotates around choosing one’s personal physician, one’s health care plan and deciding the tests that one can take. However, it is certain that Americans have openly denied health care coverage to a large percentage of their population.

The distinctions between American values and those in other parts of the world are slightly different and these slight distinctions cannot block Americans from sorting out their healthcare crisis. In spite of all these negativity, most opinion polls have reflected the Americans’ interest at having a government sponsored health care system. The Obama regime has had one of the toughest fights against American conservatives who have vehemently sworn to fight the move by Obama to make universal healthcare a reality in America. The Democrats have attempted to push similar health reforms without success in over 70 years (Carter 147).

The Obama regime displayed a victory against the liberal attitudes and conservative decisions to let America make her own health choices. The claim by the conservatives that the citizens of America were denied their individual freedoms by making it mandatory for every citizen to pay their insurance dues held little influence as most Americans were in favor of the proposed health plan. After much debates with Congress over the details that enveloped the funding of the proposed health reforms, thee judiciary was given the final say. Currently, much of the opposition against the law originates from the republican faction led by Mitt Romney. Republicans have already given financial detriments that will accompany the adoption of the Obamacare policy.

Political Parties

Conversely, the Democrats have been able to achieve the vision of provide affordable healthcare to Americans despite the strong oppositions from Republicans. The health reforms stood at the top of the list of the most expensive tax cuts in the history of America. Democrats have fought over 30 attempts to repeal parts or the whole of Obamacare with glaring success that would soon be felt by children who as of this year could not be denied insurance. Democrats claimed that the fight against the Obamacare policy without a tangible replacement for it proved that the Republicans had no concrete reason as to why the health reforms could not be adopted (Maisel & Jeffrey 47).

Democrats also criticized the unpatriotic behavior exhibited by Republicans when the mandate that all lawmakers and the rest of Congress had to switch to the new health policy was met by resistance from the Republican Party. Part of the changes put forward by the Democrats also demanded that lawmakers who voted against the health policy should repeal the other medical benefits such as lifetime care. Democrats have gone on a sensitization campaign to inform the masses of the advantages of the new health policy and these efforts have had positive response across America.

The Republican Party led by former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney has openly expressed their disinterest in pursuing the bill to its finality. In a rebuttal to the Supreme Court’s decision to give the Obama side a go ahead with the health plans, Mitt Romney announced that he, under the umbrella of the party, would fight the health reform policy. Republicans argued that since the source of funding for the proposed health reforms will originate from taxing the rich citizens it would create a national burden for all citizens. Instead, Republicans urged Congress to focus on job creation as opposed to increasing public spending on unnecessary health care plans (Kim 167).

As an option, Republicans proposed the strengthening of the private insurance system and making Medicaid affordable by assisting small and medium businesses. Republicans also opposed the proposed health care plan based on the minimal state expenditure principle. They argued that the new healthcare system placed under the governments’ watch would be inefficient and would lead to a further expansion of the role of the state. Republicans predicted that new agencies would have to be established as well as hiring new health employees that would lead to a bloated government that promoted overspending of public funds.

Media

The media plays a central and crucial role within American politics. The media sets the trend for particular political events through providing coverage or the lack of it. Media bias has always been a controversial topic within the American political scene with the major stakeholders, the Republicans and the Democrats accusing each other of manipulating the media in their favor. In the healthcare debates that took up the bigger part of Americas’ media time, there were various claims that most of the media houses were slightly biased. The problem lied in the way most media houses went about in broadcasting key elements of the debate.

The news on the proposed healthcare system made the most important item for most television watchers in the month before it was passed into law. The public however gave these news organizations low scores when it came to rating their effectiveness at broadcasting the news on the healthcare reforms. In a study done among 1,000 adults, over 70% said the media either did a poor job or were only fair in explaining the details of the Bill. Around 20% said that the coverage was satisfactory. In terms of parties, the Republicans were more critical of the coverage than their Democrat counterparts were.

In a similar study, over 46% of Republicans said that the news agencies did a poor job of broadcasting the effects of the new health policy while only 24% of Democrats said that the broadcast was poor. However, within the media circles, the Obamacare story was given more airtime within two weeks than any other story before. Apart from the health and financial implications of the Bill, the media houses also focused on the rivalry between the political parties as well as the shifting priorities that occurred in the event of the debates. For instance, most American commented that they heard that Obama was not a native of America while others said that they heard similar claims on other prominent politicians.

In an article posted on the Huffing Post by Warner Charles, the media was portrayed in a bad light as having broadcasted the health reforms debate inadequately. Charles claimed that the media houses focused a lot on the rivalry, race between the Democrats and Republicans than on new policy would apply, and what ramifications would appear. Cable news channels were cited as the worst culprits as the steered clear of the core news topics and instead held talk shows and interviews of prominent and controversial politicians. The media had come close to being unable to deliver comprehensive coverage of the happenings in Congress, the court and in political circles in an objective manner.

The media however had a positive impact on the majority of the American population as about 47% of those interviewed commented that they had an increased focus on the health debate after it was broadcasted. This was a similar number to the 49% of the population that followed the Clinton debate concerning healthcare in 1993. The commendable channels that maintained an intellectual platform where the health debate was objectively covered included Slate by Jacob Weisberg, Washington Post.com by Ezra Klein and John Israel on the Center for Public Integrity. The lesson learnt was that broadcast news on cable did not necessarily provide the best coverage of the debate process (Warner 56).

The media also created certain impressions of the meetings in town hall between the Democrats and other hecklers who were crusading for the retaining of the old medical system. The media was rather keen to publicize the demonstrators as the face of the whole health debate. Electronic media was particularly guilty for being quick in uploading chaotic scenes from such meetings that portrayed the health issue as a failure. Some of the Democrat members commented that news crews did not cover all the meetings unless chaos ruptured in the process of conducting one.

In other studies carried out by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. The same results were repeated. It was also discovered that most of the media coverage focused on the contribution by the Republicans as compared to the Democrats. Republican critics, economists and speakers were given far more airtime than their Democrat counterparts were. The media attention on the health debate also waned after the matter was taken up by the Supreme Court as was exhibited by the paltry 2% media coverage that was , up to a week ago, 40% coverage (Daschle & David 299).

References

Carter, Jimmy. Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005. Print.

Charles Warner. Media Health Care Coverage Is Unhealthy. Huffington Post., 22 July 2012.Web. Accessed on 23 July 2012. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-warner/media-health-care-coverag_b_249484.html

Daschle, Thomas, and David Nather. Getting It Done: How Obama and Congress Finally Broke the Stalemate to Make Way for Healthcare Reform. New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2010. Print.

Kim Jay. Declaration of war against Obamacare. The Korea times. 23 July 2012. Web. Accessed on 23 July 2012. Retrieved from http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2012/07/137_115723.html

Maisel, Louis S, and Jeffrey M. Berry. The Oxford Handbook of American Political Parties and Interest Groups. Oxford: University Press, 2010. Print.

Marino Gordon. American Values as Glimpsed Through our Health Care Policies. Huffington Post., 28 March 2008.Web. Accessed on 23 July 2012. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gordon-marino/american-values-glimpsed-_b_58216.html