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Dare greatly to win greatly

The true cynic is the person who has given up hope that things can change, embracing and eventually even defending the status quo.

Take former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s response at the PBS Democratic debate on Thursday. After Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders noted that universal, single-payer health care is far from impossible — most of the industrialized world uses it — Clinton replied thus:

“Let me just say, once again, that having been in the trenches fighting for this, I believe strongly we have to guarantee health care. I believe we are on the path to doing that. The last thing we need is to throw our country into a contentious debate about health care again. And we are not England. We are not France.”

American exceptionalism?

Say whatever you’d like about Sanders — that he’s hopelessly naive, that he’s got no chance to ever see his agenda become law, that he’s titling at the biggest windmills of them all — but don’t say he doesn’t dare greatly.

And make no mistake, universal, single-payer health care is a worthy cause, as even Clinton acknowledged. Sanders’ question remains valid, and unanswered: Why should America be the only major country on Earth that doesn’t guarantee health care to all its citizens as a right?

For Clinton, the answer isn’t to replicate the system found in Canada, Great Britain or France, but seemingly to build on the shaky foundation of American for-profit, insurance company-run health care.

“We inherited a system that was set up during World War II: 170 million Americans get health insurance right now through their employers,” Clinton explained. She’s right: Health insurance benefits were created to get around wartime wage caps, a way of competing for workers without raising pay.

But we won the war. We defeated the Axis powers. Wage caps are no longer the law. And the president who was in office for most of that conflict — Franklin Delano Roosevelt — believed strongly that Americans should have health care as a matter of right. He knew that just because America has always done something a certain way does not mean it must always do that thing in exactly that way. In fact, that’s often the wrong approach.

“So what we have tried to do, and what President Obama succeeded in doing was to build on the health care system we have, get us to 90 percent coverage,” Clinton continued. “We have to get the other 10 percent of the way to 100. I far prefer that and the chances we have to be successful there than trying to start all over again, gridlocking our system and trying to get from zero to 100 percent.”

Clinton, a veteran not only of Washington political battles in general, but of health care reform in particular, knows whereof she speaks. But isn’t it possible that her long, hard experience has made her more cynical about what can and cannot be done? Might that have blinded her to the fact that our current system fails too many people far too often? That getting from 90 percent to 100 percent means little if you can’t afford to go to the doctor, or fill a prescription, or that you still face bankruptcy after a major illness? Or how about the simple fact that more can be achieved even in a divided system by someone who dreams big, rather than someone who enters with incremental progress as a stratagem?

For some reason, when Sanders and Clinton discuss this issue, I cannot get the words of Robert F. Kennedy, paraphrasing George Bernard Shaw, out of my mind: “There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”

The difference in that sentence is all the difference in the world.

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist and co-host of the show “PoliticsNOW” airing at 5:30 p.m. Sundays on 8NewsNow. Follow him on Twitter (@SteveSebelius) or reach him at 702-387-5276 or SSebelius@reviewjournal.com.

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