I’ve been giving these remarks at talks around the state in the last few weeks, most recently at the Neighborhood Networks conference last week. My aim is to bring people up to date on the state of health care reform and inspire them to join our movement, In a day or so, Health Care For America Now is going to announce the next stage in our effort to build a powerful movement for reform. So this is a good moment to let you all know where things stand.
An Odd Habit, Perhaps Broken This Year?
I’ve had an odd habit for the last twenty eight years. It’s one that I think, with your help, I can break this year.
Ever since Ronald Reagan was elected in November 1980, I’ve read a biography of Franklin Roosevelt, or a history of the New Deal, in December of Presidential election years. I’ve done it to cheer myself up after each dispiriting Democratic defeat.
In the face of that kind of despair, it is good therapy to read about Roosevelt winning a large majority of the vote, Democrats winning a large majority of seats in Congress, and then in the 100 days, working together to enact a series of measures that reform the banking system; create public works; regulate the banks and security industries; give new support to labor; and create the CCC and TVA.
I’ve done this every four years without fail except in 1993, when I held out until about March or April. At that point, with the Clinton administration beginning to go off track and my doubts growing about whether either Clinton knew how to count to 60, I went in search of another volume on Roosevelt.
This year, however, I think can break my habit, despite the arrival of a new biography of FDR that look good.
I don’t have to read about the dramatic Democratic victory seventy six years ago because we’ve just seen a dramatic Democratic victory. And I don’t have to live in the past of a transformative Democratic presidency because I think we are about to see one of or own.
And the most important thing that transformative Presidency is going to do is—finally—to create a federal guarantee of quality affordable health care for all
Why I’m so optimistic? For four reasons.
The Election Was a Referendum on Health Care
First, because this campaign was in a large part a referendum on health care reform. In that respect, it was very different from the 1932 election.
FDR campaigned on something he called the New Deal. But he never really said what the New Deal would mean, largely because he had not decided in his own mind what public policies would be at the center of his administration. And he won because the times were bad and the country was looking for change of direction.
Barack Obama also won in large part because the times are bad. But he took advantage of our bad times to clearly enunciate policy direction for the future, one that had health care reform at its center.
The Obama Campaign focused on health care to an extent that has not fully registered among pundits but that is obvious to those of us who live in a battleground state and saw the presidential campaign in all its glory. Obama spent $113 million on television ads that focused on health care. And, in the critical month of October, over 81% of his ads mentioned health care.
Moreover, from the beginning to the end of the campaign, health care was a critical issue to both candidates and to the voters. If you just look at the polls that ask people what is the most important issue, this will not be evident. The financial crisis did make the economy the issue everyone was talking about. But if you look at a broader set of polls that ask people how important a set of issues are to them, you will see that health care started at the top and, even as the economy tanked, remained tied with the economy with close to 80% saying that it was an important or very important issue. And if you look at the polls that ask people which public policy issue has the greatest effect on their own life, health care is at the top. Even when the economic news was at its worst, more people feared having to pay for a major illness than feared losing their job.
Among the swing voters, those who were undecided or unsure of their vote in the last month, no issue helped Obama as much as health care did. Two-thirds of swing voters agreed with his stance on health care reform.
Not only did Obama campaign on health care, he had a clear program for health care reform, one that he outlined seventeen months before the election. Compare that to President Roosevelt who said little during his campaign that guided his administration or President Clinton who also campaigned on health care reform but did not announce even the bare outlines of a plan until two months before the election.
So the Obama campaign was not only focused on health care reform but it defend a particular path to reform and heavily criticized the alternative plan put forward by John McCain.
And we should thank John McCain for putting forward a health care plan that so clearly embodied the hopes and dreams not of the American people, but of the insurance companies and that was so resoundingly rejected by the voters.
No incoming president in the last few generations can claim such as clear a mandate for a specific
public policy as Barack Oamba can on the health care issue.
We are building a powerful movement for health care reform
Second, we are building a strong movement for health care reform.
There are many players and organizations in this movement from organizations, like the Pennsylvania Health Access Network, that came together to fight for state health care reform last year and are going to be working for federal action in 2009 to a number of groups that are working for single payer health care.
But the group I’ll talk about here is Health Care For America Now (HCAN), because I lead it in Pennsylvania.
HCAN is a coalition co-chaired nationally by SEIU and AFSCME, convened in Pennsylvania by SEIU and the AFL-CIO, and lead in our state by Penn Action, PUP and ACORN and the UFCW Local 1776.
Hundreds of labor unions and citizen, neighborhood, consumer, health care, religious and other progressive groups are part of HCAN both nationwide and in our state.
We are all united behind a few core principles: We want the federal government to guarantee affordable health care for everyone. We want to set rules for health insurers that require them to offer everyone, without exceptions, high quality insurance at a premium they can afford. And we want everyone to have a choice of the private insurance they have now, another private plan, and a new high quality public health insurance program that is also open to all at affordable rates.
We have been working since July to support these principles in three ways.
First we have been asking members of Congress to choose between our principles and those of the insurance companies. So far, 154 members of Congress have chosen our side and we are on a path that should give us a majority in Congress in support of our principles by January.
Among those members of Congress were Senators Obama and Biden, who endorsed our statement of principles in October.
Already, in Pennsylvania, Senator Casey and Representatives, Schwarz, Brady, Fattah, Patrick Murphy, Kanjorski, Doyle, and Altmire have endorsed what we now call the Obama / HCAN Principles. We expect to have other Representative sign on soon
And, just two weeks before the election, we held a rally in the Constitution Center attended by 500 people who witnessed Allyson Schwartz and Bob Brady and representatives of Senator Casey and Governor Rendell sign on to our principles.
Second, we have been asking organizations and individuals to make the same choice, and have been building a broad coalition of groups and activists who will be energetic in bringing pressure to bear on our politicians to make sure that health care reform bills are introduced and make their way through Congress and to the desk of the President in 2009.
And third, we have been calling out the insurance companies, showing Americans that they even if they have insurance they can’t count on it. Our movement, in other words, is not just building on those without insurance but also on the vast majority of Americans who have insurance but are wondering both about whether they will be able to afford it in the future and about just how good it is.
We are reminding the American people that the current business model of the insurers is to deny affordable coverage and care to everyone who might actually need real health care. And we are showing them that this model does not work for anyone but the insurance companies. We are working, in other words, to discredit the insurers now so as to to undermine the huge media campaign we know they will launch against our reform program.
And, in making this case we will have some important help. Harry and Louise, or rather, the actors who played these representatives of the insurance company line the struggle over health care in the 1990s, are now on our side
We are doing this with a small staff and the active participation of over 6000 health care activists we have identified in Pennsylvania, people who have signed up on the internet or signed cards in support of our principles or called their members of Congress on our behalf.
We will be intensifying this action over the next weeks and months, of course, need you to join us our efforts to phone and canvass our fellow Pennsylvanians; to make calls and write to our members of Congress, and to the write letters to the editor and op-eds.
The Political Process Moving in the Right Direction
Third, Democratic politicians are already thinking seriously about how to move health care next year. They are embracing our principles and are determined quickly to reach the consensus we need.
Two leading Senators, Baucus and Kennedy, are already working hard to build a consensus Democratic position in the upper chamber of Congress. Just recently, Senator Baucus, a moderate from Montana who chairs the Finance Committee put forward a position paper that was close to the Obama / HCAN principles. Senator Kennedy, the Chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, has had his committee staff working to build support for a consensus approach to health care reform among a wide range of constituencies. And the two Senators have committed to working with one another to introduce legislation that reflect the consensus Democratic approach.
There is still some uncertainty about how the process will work out in the House. But we are hopeful that there, too, a broad progressive consensus that meets the HCAN principles will emerge.
And, with a huge movement building in the country, and a progressive consensus emerging in the Congress, the stage will be set for President Obama to endorse this approach before the end of his first 100 days in office. And that will set us moving toward a final vote in both Houses in 2009
Of course, we will make every effort to find Republican supporters of health care reform so that we can avoid the threat of a filibuster in the Senate. There are a number of Republicans, including our own Senator Specter, who might join in supporting serious, progressive legislation. We also have a plan to get around the filibuster, if that becomes necessary.
The Economic Crisis and Health Care
Fourth, contrary to the view of some politicians and commentators, the current financial and economic crisis actually will help us move toward health care reform not stand in our way.
It is not surprising that the most of the people taking this line—and calling on Barack Obama to be prudent and reasonable and delay health care reform—are those who have never been strong supporters of reform to begin with.
Fortunately for our side, they are all quite wrong.
There is no question that the first order of business for the Obama administration is to resolve the immediate financial crisis and take action to prevent the country from sinking into a deep recession.
This goal is so important, however, that major steps towards attaining will happen fast. New stimulus and tax packages are likely to pass in the first two months of the Obama administration. And the administration will undoubtedly use the tools created by Congress in the last four months in new and creative ways to permanently rescue the financial markets.
But then, I expect that President Obama will do what he has said all along he will do, start addressing the long term problems connected to health care and energy that are among the major sources of our current difficulties.
For the last twenty years or so our economy has been based in no small part on the borrowing allowed by endlessly rising asset prices. We need to rebuild our economy on a much more solid and equitable foundation by raising the wages of average Americans so they can buy the goods produced by average Americans. We can’t do that until we fix the problem of health care.
Our businesses can’t compete in world markets when health care for their workers is their biggest cost of production. American workers can’t consume if productivity increases do not lead to wage increases because they are eaten up by health care costs. And we won’t be able to build a high tech, high wage economy if our best workers are afraid to move to new jobs because they fear that they will lose their health care benefits.
We know that while it will save us money in the long run, health care reform will be costly in the short run. But that is not a problem. Everyone acknowledges that we need to dramatically increase federal spending to get the economy out of its very deep rut. So now is absolutely the ideal time to absorb those short term costs.
Instead of being a barrier to reform, then, our economic troubles have taken away what we always thought would be a real stumbling block to health care reform, the need to raise revenues in the short term to pay for it. And, by the time we actually need those revenues, the cost saving features of health care reform that meet the HCAN principles will already start to become effective.
Conclusion
Given Obama’s mandate for health care reform, the movement we are building, the effort to reach consensus in Washington and the economic needs of the country, I’m confident that health care reform is on the way
So I’m think I’m going to be able to break my habit and not read about FDR this month or in the next year. Instead, I’m going to work to create and enjoy living in a transformative moment instead of reading about one.
I urge all of you to join me and find a way that you, too, can take part in this extraordinary moment of time and incredible movement for reform.
For what we have done over the last year; what we are doing right now; and what we are going to do next year to reform health care in America is going to be written about and read about for years.
And some day, in another dark time—and so long as we live in a democracy and progressives make mistakes, conservatives will come to power and there will dark times—someone depressed about an election defeat will cheer herself up by picking up a book, not about FDR and the New Deal, but about the great political transformation of 2008 and 2009 that brought us guaranteed, quality affordable health care for all