Even before watching the bipartisan healthcare summit on February 25th, I began to think about how I would mediate the divide between the Obama/Reid/Pelosi reform proposal and the position staked out by the Rupublican leadership. Without knowing it, I was not alone in imagining a mediated solution to this conflict. Mediator Christopher Annunziata wrote in his CKA Mediation and Arbitration Blog that If Anyone Needs a Mediator, It's These People:
"Both sides need to move from their entrenched positions and discuss real options, not just talking points prepared by pointy headed people in Ivory Towers or tucked inside the Beltway. Having a mediator involved would be very useful."
A week later, Mediator Lee Jay Berman posted at Eye On Conflict that Real Political Reform Requires Adding a Neutral To the Mix:
"What makes mediation work is the introduction of a neutral third party. Having an unbiased person at the table can bring big picture perspective into the room when all others are mired in the fog of their power games and can't or won't see another approach...A real neutral, who wouldn't be a politician campaigning for reelection, would turn off the cameras, close the door, and encourage everyone to disclose his or her needs, pressures and underlying interests in the privacy and confidentiality of the mediation process."
Leaving aside all of the ways in which the healthcare reform debate does not resemble the setting required for effective mediation, I began to imagine what I would do if thrust into a room with a commitment from both sides to mediate in good faith. Having reviewed the parties' respective positions on numerous, individual proposals for reform, I first thought that there must be a way to parse and compromise among these proposals to reach a mutually acceptable outcome. But the more I thought about it, the clearer it became that such an effort would fail. I had an intuitive sense of why it would fail, but I struggled to explain that result in terms familiar to traditional mediation theory. In fact, I started a blog post on this subject, but put it aside, unfinished.
Shortly after that, I read a description of the Frank Sander Lecture to be given by Professor Lawrence Susskind as the opening plenary of the ABA Dispute Resolution Section's Annual Spring Conference on April 8th: "Values and Identity Conflicts: Proposing a New Dispute Resolution Doctrine." The summary, which appears in the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution's February Just Resolutions Enews (members only), turned on the light bulb in my head.
As the description of Professor Susskind's lecture puts it:
"Sometimes...disputes are more about values and identities than about interests; when this happens, traditional mediation tactics may not work."
* * *
"We define values-based disputes as those in which the parties' values and identities are so important to the dispute that they interfere with the parties' ability to settle interest-based issues, or in more severe circumstances, even to proceed with the process of dispute resolution.
* * *
Values-based disputes, thus, present special challenges for a mediator. These include: the usual interest -based techniques may lead to superficial agreements that do not really satisfy the parties' most important concerns (and, thus, may not be durable). This is especially likely when parties conceal their values and identities and initially act as if disputes are really about interests" (emphasis added).
This is exactly the problem in the healthcare reform debate. For one side, the values associated with providing high quality healthcare insurance coverage to everyone in America are central to that party's identity, and transcend all of the policy details and budgetary considerations that might be viewed as "interests." For the other side, the values associated with maintaining individual responsibility and promoting smaller government are paramount.
To really address these differences in values, Democrats would have to acknowledge that, in the end, it doesn't matter how much their healthcare reform will cost, because in their view it assures a fundamental right, and the country will just have to figure out how to pay for it somehow, someday. Not a message suitable for anyone seeking reelection in the current environment. Similarly, Republicans would have to acknowledge that it would not be a bad result if millions of people had no prospect of enjoying high quality healthcare insurance coverage, and instead had to rely on the "safety net" of Medicaid, charity care, and hospital emergency rooms until they could work their way out if it. No great sound bites to campaign on there, either. This is why the proponents on both sides of this public debate speak only in terms of the regulatory nuts and bolts, dollars and cents and parliamentary machinations that continue to make our heads spin.
I don't know how Professor Susskind's lecture will suggest the mediator should approach this dispute. My guess is that after getting the parties to acknowledge their core values, the mediator would need to facilitate a discussion in which each side accepts those aspects of the other's values that it can agree with, and then builds upon those shared beliefs. Even when values are not shared, each side can be urged to at least respect the other's values, and adopt a willingness to permit the other side to pursue those values in fashioning a mutual resolution to the conflict. I know this probably will not happen in Washington, but the thought process is instructive, and you never know who might be listening to Professor Susskind on April 8th.
