By Evan Falchuk

Steven Pearlstein wants to know:

Are you with him, or are you with the terrorists?

He’s serious.  And it’s part of the continuing, thoughtful debate on health care.

As you read Pearlstein’s column you see something that he very apparently does not.  In complaining that “political terrorists” are preventing a national consensus on health care reform, he misses that there is not even a consensus in Congress.  And there is no plan at all from the President.

Are they political terrorists, too?

I don’t know, and given how he poses the issue (and others), it’s hard to take him very seriously.

But let’s look at his major complaint.  He believes that reform has fallen on hard times because someone is wickedly convincing Americans that reform means the government is going to take over health care.  Some of this is the rough and tumble of Washington, and veterans like Pearlstein ought to know better than to whine about it.

But where would Americans ever get an idea like that?

Well, for months, the President and Congress have campaigned that the major purpose of reform is to save money.  While there are lots of competing plans, one thing is clear in all of them: they envision a much greater role for government.  In an environment in which the federal government has all but taken over swaths of the automotive and financial services industries, it’s hard to blame people for thinking that this is what the government wants to do to health care, too.

It’s been made worse by the latest message:  the private insurers are “villains” and “rackets.”  So if the insurance companies are the bad guys, who is going to be the good guy?  Again, you can’t fault people for concluding that what they mean is that the government is going to rid of the bad guys and replace them with itself.

This isn’t the fault of opponents- unless they tricked reformers into using these approaches.

What it means, though, is that the most important question – what does reform mean to me? – has been answered quite clearly.  It means the government is going to figure out ways to make sure that less money is spent on you and your health care.  Did you take that new job, or stay in an old one because you liked the benefits there?  Well, that’s probably going to change and there’s nothing you can do about it.

It’s hard for people to believe assurances that “if you like your plan you can stay in it” when there is no actual legislation in front of anyone.  More so when advocates like Pearlstein call reform the “test of whether this country can function once again as a civil society” and that reform means “big, important changes that require everyone to give up something in order to make everyone better off.”  This doesn’t sound like “if you like your plan, you can keep it.”  It sounds like a very major transformation.

Health care reform is important, needed and worthy of serious, sustained discussion.  We haven’t had it, and the anger at the town halls is a reflection of how people feel when they think they aren’t being listened to.  But what Pearlstein and others are advocating isn’t thoughtful consideration, it’s pass a plan, any plan, now.

Or the terrorists will have won.