Partisanship and Unsavory Sales Tactics at Healthcare Summit

ROBBIE HARMON, UPP Contributor
The Utah People's Post
Mar 1, 2010

I come from a family with a long history in the retail automobile business. Americans consistently rank car salesmen amongst the least respected and most derided professions. I experienced this first hand on numerous occasions while working in the family business.

At Harmon’s Auto Center, my family has always tried to differentiate itself with transparency, honesty, and more closely aligning the incentives of sales representatives and customers. For example, the dealership uses a flat sales commission so sales representatives have no personal incentive to charge customers a higher price.

I recall multiple encounters with distrusting customers who, despite all my efforts to communicate with complete honesty, felt I was hiding something in order to “win” a negotiation. Even when I would place a vehicle invoice on the desk, show the customer the pricing matrix used by the dealership, and describe the margins earned on each sale, many customers still found it difficult to believe me. In their defense, this apprehensive approach is justified by the many car salesmen across the country who use unsavory sales tactics for personal enrichment at their customers’ expense.

After working in this type of environment I determined that I would always assume the best in someone, yet try to be informed enough to recognize deceit or danger. That is the attitude with which I approached President Obama’s Healthcare Summit last Thursday. Politicians are typically the only people who are stereotyped to be less trustworthy than car salesmen. Because this is a major stereotype applied to many good people, I have tried to be especially slow to pass judgment on U.S. Congressmen, Senators, and the President.

The Healthcare Summit was advertized as a forum for Democrats and Republicans to share ideas, find common ground, and work together to create bi-partisan support for health reform efforts. I wanted to believe those claims were sincere and that both parties would come to the table willing to make concessions and work together. That is what I hoped and tried to believe.

Despite this hope, having followed the healthcare reform process very closely over the past year, I suspected a different outcome. What I suspected was that Democrats would use this forum to paint a picture of Republican resistance that is politically motivated, irrational, and preventing landmark legislation similar in magnitude to the Social Security Act. I suspected that Republicans would use the forum to show that they have legitimate alternatives, build public opposition to the idea of passing legislation using the atypical process of reconciliation, and paint a picture of Democrats as ideologues that are detached from fiscal responsibility and public opinion. I did not suspect that either party would win support from across the aisle. I did not suspect a true willingness to work together.

The President has received much praise in the media for the way he conducted the meeting, mastered the “facts”, and rebutted any criticism of his ideas for reform. I admire the President’s leadership skills and his ability to inspire, yet what I saw was undeserving of praise. In the very lengthy summit, I saw unfulfilled promises about what the meeting was intended for. With only a few exceptions, I saw Republicans and Democrats (including President Obama) delivering prepared speeches rather than having a meaningful give and take discussion aimed at coming together. What I saw was political maneuvering, not a sincere attempt at bi-partisanship. The most revealing evidence of this is the fact that both parties knew well in advance the issues that would be raised. They’ve been hearing them for the past year. Both parties knew going in that neither they nor their counterparty were willing to concede any of their positions.

Given all this, I was left feeling like all the talk of bi-partisanship and coming together was nothing more than shallow political advertising. Once it became clear that the intention of President Obama and the Democrats is to move forward, with or without the support of Republicans and the public, all the talk of bi-partisanship seemed very insincere.

In most cases, the Republicans were no better than the Democrats. The difference was that they were on the short end of the power imbalance. Several of them resorted to the worn out tactic of printing the entire Senate bill and placing the stack prominently in view of the camera. While I agree that the legislation is overly complex and could be simplified, this is like an old joke that is now on the verge of being obnoxious.

Overall, I do think the Healthcare Summit was effective in three important ways. First, it allowed the American people to hear legitimate alternatives to what is currently being proposed. Second, it whittled through the various layers of reform and identified the heart of the divide between Republicans and Democrats – the level of involvement from the federal government. Third, it exposed what I believe are equivalent to the unsavory sales tactics used by car salesmen that cause such widespread lack of trust.

Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin – in my mind the star of the summit and a person who will play an important role in our nation’s future – described the Senate reform legislation as being filled with “smoke and mirrors”. To make the sale, there is hidden spending all throughout the bill. What he called the most “cynical” of all, is something that was in the news several months ago – the so called “doc fix”. This refers to a legally mandated reduction in Medicare payments to physicians. Despite being demanded by existing law, this reduction has been overridden in Congress for each of the last seven years. There is absolute agreement that this law needs to be repealed, but because it made the original bill appear too costly, it was removed and is being pushed through Congress as a stand-alone piece of legislation. This is nothing more than an unbundling of reform efforts to make each appear more palatable. It is purely a sales tactic that is not transparent.

This and other issues came to the surface throughout the summit. While it was not a reconciliatory forum – as advertised – it certainly was a political debate – as expected. The Summit revealed many shared objectives and preferences, but more significantly revealed a seemingly impenetrable separation concerning the role of government. I hope people watched and I hope opinions were informed and strengthened as a result of the debate.

Despite diverging views on social and fiscal issues, I have repeatedly tried to place trust in the way President Obama and the Democrats in Congress carryout the legislative and governing processes. However, the list of experiences which bring their trustworthiness into question is growing. The healthcare reform legislation and the processes being used to drive it forward are yet additional offenses on this growing list. Some might argue that the end justifies the means. I respectfully disagree.