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Indubitably, you've seen this picture. And possibly, you know the back story. In the 1940's, John Dingell, Sr. made the first congressional proposal for Universal Health Care. In 1955, his son, John Dingell, Jr., took over the seat after the senior Dingell's passing, and has submitted Universal Health Care legislation EVERY YEAR for the 28 terms that he's been in Congress. Dingell personally used the giant gavel after Medicare passed in 1965, and he lent Speaker Pelosi the gavel for yesterday's historic moment. John Dingell is Dean of the House of Representatives, has the longest tenure of anyone in the House who has not also served in the Senate, and he is seeking his 29th term this year. What you may not know is that FDR was a big fan of Universal Health Care. He felt that the initial speech in favour would best be made by his wife, Eleanor, and the plan was for her to make the speech and disseminate it through the radio (similar to a Fireside Chat) and then FDR would call on Congress to enact the program. The glitch was that the speech was scheduled for 8 December, 1941. There are two other points to be made about the giant gavel. First, look at the people, the Democrats: united, some holding hands, some arm in arm, marching in unison to do what is best for America. Is this bill perfect? Certainly not, far from it, and these people know that. But by standing together, whipping properly, and moving forward, the outcome will improve. And by standing together, it's not just fixing health care, it's on to the economy, jobs, climate change, education and all the other big items. There is a second figurative gavel, and it's coming from progressive candidates across the land, either primary challengers to incumbent Democrats, or working to unseat Republicans. Here's a sample from Doug Pike: I am so pleased to be sending you this email -- House Democrats just made history by passing a major health care reform package. This bill will lower costs for families and businesses, reduce deficits by over $1 trillion in the coming 2 decades, and extend health care coverage to tens of millions of Americans. On Friday, I urged Congressman Jim Gerlach to support this historic reform, but tonight he voted "No."
He voted "No" to improving health coverage for the 523,000 residents of the 6th Congressional District who have insurance;
"No" to improving Medicare for 108,000 6th District beneficiaries -- including closing the donut hole;
"No" to allowing 52,000 young adults to obtain coverage on their parents' insurance plans;
"No" to ending the practice of denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.
He even voted "No" after the Congressional Budget Office reported that this would be the largest deficit reduction bill since 1993!
No bill is perfect -- and this reform bill is no exception. When I am elected, I will continue this fight to make health care cheaper, higher quality, and more accessible for all Americans.
Here are two key improvements we still need:
1. Give Americans a strong public option, such as the right to buy into Medicare should they choose. This will create the type of competition with private insurers that will bring down costs for families and businesses alike.
2. Health insurance companies currently get special treatment and are exempt from anti-trust laws. Ending this exemption passed the House once, but we need to keep fighting to achieve this in order to create more competition and lower the cost of health care.
I'm ready to beat Jim Gerlach and go to Washington and continue the fight
My guess is that similar letters went out in every Congressional district. All saying "look what we did" and "we're not done yet", personalized with human numbers for each district. We've been told we're going to lose big in November, but there is a lot of hope here: a delivery on actual change, a commitment to future action, elected officials (and those working to become elected officials) standing up for the core beliefs of the Party. The next step, and I hope we get this one right, is to work on message: to set up a White House and House of Representatives site equivalent to candidate Obama's "Fight the Lies" web site back in 2008. So when some ignorant person says "this will cost", the rest of us have an easy link to the CBO data. When they yell "care will be cut", the successes will show they're wrong: imagine a list of names, by Congressional District of people who NOW have health insurance.... I personally don't like the bill because it's not Single Payer, but I am thrilled that we are on the road to more and better coverage, and have hope that we'll get there. That we'll stick together and make it work. |
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