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wants the Occupiers gathered in Sproul Plaza to know that he cares. In fact, he cares far more than some people. “Now, there are some people out there who say we cannot afford education any longer, we cannot afford, as a nation, to provide social services to the poor.” (He regularly employs President Obama’s favorite rhetorical device, the straw man.)
    Applause.
    Reich also wants Occupy Cal to know that he stands with them. He is proud of the Berkeley tradition “of free expression, of social justice and of democracy.”
    You must also—and in fact I’m sure you do—feel in your gut that the Occupy movement—the Occupy Cal, the Occupy Oakland, occupations are going on all over this country—are ways in which people are beginning to respond to the crisis of our democracy. And I am so proud of you here today. Your dedication to these principles, your willingness to be patient, your willingness to spend hours in general assemblies, your willingness to put up with what you have put up with is already making a huge difference.
    Applause.
    Reich is simpatico with their sense of “moral outrage” over the failures of the system to take care of the “infirm.” “The days of apathy are over,” he says. Applause.
    You may wonder what exactly the moral foundation is, according to Professor Reich, if you care about social justice ? What does a proper government-run safety net look like when it comes to caring for the infirm ? These questions were at the heart of the debate over the signature progressive accomplishment of Obama’s first term, and it is important that we get to the answers unclouded by political hyperbole.
    WHOSE CARE?
    D EBATE OVER HEALTH CARE REFORM IS BY DEFINITION A MOST PERSONAL argument. After all, it’s about your health, and the well-being of you and those you love. The decisions we make about our health are personal, informed by our right to life and liberty, and by the personal knowledge that only we have about the needs and circumstances of those closest to us. Patients should come first. Patients should decide. Patients, the customers in health care, should be in charge. Health care decisions are best made individually, from the bottom up.
    The idea that someone else would decide for us is downright un-American, a moral breach of a sacred boundary. And that, in its essence, is what the battle over Obamacare was really all about.
    You will recall the unified sense of outrage expressed by advocates of Obamacare when opponents claimed that the legislation would lead to “death panels” staffed by government bureaucrats empowered to determine for you, from the top down, which treatments you might qualify for based on some kind of cost-benefit to society, within the constraints of some politically determined global budget. In August 2009, in the heat of the national debate over his plan—his fellow Democrats were on the defensive in town hall meetings across the country, struggling to defend their health care bill amidst a citizen outcry—President Obama himself sought to step forward and debunk the notion:
    The rumor that’s been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for “death panels” that will basically pull the plug on grandma because we’ve decided that we don’t—it’s too expensive to let her live anymore. . . . Now, in fairness, the underlying argument I think has to be addressed, and that is people’s concern that if we are reforming the health care system to make it more efficient, which I think we have to do, the concern is that somehow that will mean rationing of care, right?—that somehow some government bureaucrat out there will be saying, well, you can’t have this test or you can’t have this procedure because some bean-counter decides that this is not a good way to use our health care dollars. 2
    The president denies any such motive or outcome under his plan to manage health care, based on the best knowledge of the