“There seems to be a plan in place for enacting reform, even with the Massachusetts setback.”

Despite this “plan,” however, the political environment for reform has very definitely been elevated from the “Use Caution” warning level to “INSANELY TOXIC!” The Democratic rank-and-file are wavering, and even that’s putting it lightly.

This post represents the first in a series that intends to better prepare proponents of reform (and all its component benefits) to help congress “punch it through” and then hopefully defend a final reform package come the November elections.

That brings us to the question of what is the morally right thing to do? To answer this question, lets first take a few lines from Paul Krugman:

“There is a morally coherent argument against guaranteed health care, which basically comes down to saying that life my be unfair, but it’s not the job of the government to rid the world of injustice. If some people can’t afford health insurance, this argument would assert, that’s unfortunate, but the government has no business forcing other people to help them out through higher taxes. If some people inherit bad genes that make them vulnerable to illness, or acquire conditions at some point in their lives that make it impossible for them to get insurance from then on, well, there are many strokes of bad luck in life. The government can’t fix them all, and there’s no reason to single out these troubles in particular.”

Perhaps even more repugnant, when I engaged a bunch of TEA Party protesters outside an event for Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), they simply told me (in their plain speaking ways) that a single mother who can’t afford health insurance should “die” if she gets diagnosed with cancer. “Then she should die” were their exact words. They continued: “If she can’t take care of herself then we’d all be better off without her anyway.”

That’s essentially the moral argument against reform but yet it’s one you almost never hear in the public discourse because its one that the majority of voters disagree with. Some of the most essential parts of reform, such as outlawing the practice of insurance companies denying people based on preexisting conditions, poll overwhelming well. That’s why the opponents of reform nearly always stick to the line that doing the morally right thing to do isn’t possible…..because the moral case for universal health care isn’t what’s in dispute.

So let’s do an experiment:

Next time you encounter someone who is opposed to health care reform, ask them “well what is the morally right thing to do?”. If they come up with a morally coherent argument against health care reform, please do let me know. If they quickly descend into “well health care reform isn’t possible” simply tell them that every other industrialized country insures a greater percentage of their population than we do, for only a fraction the cost.

This fact will be the topic of my next post on health care, so please stay tuned.

- Matt

You can take a great deal of meaning out of the result of yesterday’s Massachusetts special election in many different ways. For someone of my leanings, most of it is pretty grim. One thing would be false to infer, however, is that it was a failed referendum on health care reform. In the grand scheme of things, I really don’t see this election as a “game-changer” so to say. As much as it pains me to admit, the people of Massachusetts are justified in their choice, and Martha Coakley probably deserved to lose. There is no reason to be mad at them. If any fingers are to be pointed, they should be at Martha Coakley for taking her victory for granted, but also at Max Baucus and Barack Obama for allowing a process that should have been concluded over the summer to drag on into January. At this point, the “end game” that I laid out is in some danger as a reform bill will almost certainly not be on the President’s desk by the time he gives his State of the Union Address, further delaying a shift towards jobs, the economy and averting a potential disaster in the midterm election.

I would like to make one think crystal clear, however: The voters of Massachusetts did not vote to repudiate the health care reform bill yesterday. The reality is that President Obama is still quite popular in the state and the national media, as well as the GOP, have it all wrong. Martha Coakley was a mediocre candidate who ran a poor campaign. She was described as dispassionate and her campaign schedule was remarkably light. That is even without mentioning that she misspelled “Massachusetts” in a campaign ad. Why did she even win the primary, then? I’m probably the wrong person to ask as I supported Alan Khazei, but being backed by the powerful Massachusetts Democratic machine might have helped. Mr. Brown, on the hand, hired former staffers from Mitt Romney’s successful run for governor in 2002. He moderated, shunned the Republican party establishment and took advantage of the feelings of a frustrated electorate by creating a strong contrast by successfully painting her as an insider. As we all know, being defined by your opponent is the kiss of death and anyone who watched the race closely saw this coming. Once she was defined by Brown, not even Barack Obama could save her. In fact, the presence of prominent politicians only reinforced Brown’s message.

A reform bill must and will be passed. Without a filibuster proof majority, the blame for failure shifts more towards Republicans and they will have to explain why health care coverage should not be near universal, why people should be allowed to be denied for pre-existing conditions and why parents should not be allowed to keep their children on their plans till they are twenty-six. Saying no for the sake of bringing down the Democrats is not so smart, and prying away one Republican is not an impossible task. It may be watered down some more, but mark my words that this bill will not die.

The problem goes back to Massachusetts. Mitt Romney passed a landmark health care reform bill in his state that mandated coverage. Scott Brown can tell you all about it; he voted for that bill in the state senate. To that end, it was wildly successful and has served as an empirical example for wonks to draw from. In fact, the Senate bill has a striking resemblance to the Massachusetts plan. The only problem was that it left the state with a multibillion dollar budget deficit. While it is possible to address the issue of coverage and the high cost of care separately, solving the former without the latter being resolved soon after is a recipe for disaster. I maintain that a legislative solution to the cost problem is unlikely to pass and even more unlikely to completely solve the problem. There are four measures that I think need to be taken and I will elaborate on some of these in a future column, but I’ll kill the suspense by briefly previewing them all now.

The first may well be included in the compromise bill. It is to pay for reform not by taxing the wealthy, but by enacting a tax on the “Cadillac” health insurance plans. While it would be a tax on some of those making less than $250,000 a year, breaking an Obama campaign promise, many of his advisors think is makes a great deal of sense to pay for reform with money from inside the system. The added benefit is that it will deter expensive experimental treatments and help to bring costs under control for everyone by restoring some equilibrium to the system. Watch closely to see if this is the provision that House and Senate leaders ultimately settle on. It could be the most effective part of the bill at cutting costs if I understand it correctly.

The second is the public option. We have beaten to death why is it is a good idea. It will not pass in this bill, but I can foresee a short window as soon in either 2011 or 2013 in which it can be brought back onto the agenda if and only if the Democrats are able to more or less hold their ground in 2010 and/or if President again wins big in 2012. While a tax on “Cadillac” plans will help to regulate the market, providing direct competition will force costs to stay in check, and hopefully decrease at the expense of massive insurance industry profits.

Yet the insurance industry is only part of the problem; each and every doctor is in part responsible for skyrocketing costs. Trying to create a bill to command and control the way the proscribe medication, order tests and recommend surgery is a laughable concept. This will take experimentation and innovation over a period of time in small and controlled environments. Once a measure is proven successful, other doctors will adopt it. The process is much more complex but that is the gist. I truly believe in this method and will be talking about it more in the near future.

The last falls upon me, you, and the companies we work for. We must stay fit, eat better, and live healthy lifestyles. I have a few ideas on how to do this based on the fact that people respond to incentives. There are a few corporate examples as well that are fascinating, promising and exciting.

We cannot just fiat that the cost of medical care decrease. Our system is complex and broken. Certainly increased coverage and the first of my four initiatives suffered a slight setback yesterday, but it is not an insurmountable one. I truly believe the key will be what we can do outside the system through good old American ingenuity. In my next column or two on the issue, I hope to persuade you of the same.

We all know the game plan by now. The two health care reform bills are being combined as we speak. With some luck, the final result should be passed on to the President’s desk before the State of the Union address. Then everything on the legislative agenda between then and November will shift, relating only to jobs and economic recovery. After his first year in office, Mr. Obama will be able to say that he has achieved the holy grail of Democratic politics: near universal health care coverage. This is a great achievement, right?

Surprisingly enough for someone with rather progressive ideals, I’m not a huge fan of big government but I make an exception for health care and education. On each, I fall very far to the left of center. So this bill has me really excited. My family’s history of diabetes, cancer and heard disease or any condition I might develop is less likely to bankrupt me and will not prevent me from gaining coverage. If I choose a job or advanced degree program before I’m twenty-six that will leave me without coverage, I can stay on my family’s plan. These and many other measures are things we can all get excited about and rally behind. Surely no Republican will be able to run on a platform of trying to repeal them once the bill is finally passed.

Why then is this effort being deemed as such a failure by a majority of Americans, both on the right and even the left, that they all claim it should not be passed? Markos Moulitsas, the chief of the liberal Daily Kos, tweeted: “Insurance companies win. Time to kill this monstrosity coming out of the Senate.” MoveOn.org, everyone’s favorite firebrand of a website called on “progressives” to “block this bill.” Arianna Huffington dismissed it as “reform in name only.” Keith Olbermann of MSNBC lectured the President that he was about to consign his countrymen to a “Chicago stockyards of insurance” that would be “immoral and a betrayal of the people who elected you.” Even Dr. Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor, Presidential candidate, and Democratic Party chairman wrote that the Senate should defeat the bill, claiming that it “would do more harm than good to the future of America.”

They are all wrong. Even the most respected voices in progressive grassroots politics fail to grasp something very simple. This bill is a once in a generation opportunity to pass sweeping health care reform. Its passage will signal the end of the beginning of our reform efforts; it would be a single victory in a major battle of a very long war with no end in sight. If I can persuade you of my position, that reasons that passing a flawed the bill would not be catastrophic because this legislation is not the beginning of the end of reform. The system is more broken than most people realize and even the best of bills would have been no more than a band-aid. That’s exactly what this legislation will do. It will prevent the system from getting “infected” and causing even greater problems (such as the collapse of Medicare) and may even heal a few wounds by covering approximately thirty million people and preventing tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths each year.

Don’t get me wrong, the critics are, to an extent, right about the conspicuous flaws of the pending health-care reform. It lacks even a weak “public option.” Its subsidies are more meagre than we would like, and the bill is essentially a windfall for big pharmaceutical companies and health insurers. I am as furious as anyone about the fierce attack on women’s rights through denied abortion coverage. While I am reluctant to support a “single-payer” system, the bill is also much too reliant on private insurance. And there are surely senators and representatives whose motives are corrupt. It is no secret that Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson and others had to be bribed for their support.

Are Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress doing enough? No. But they are doing what is possible. You might find that pathetic, but it’s no fallacy. If any “system” is to be blamed, it should be the archaic, gridlock-inducing rules of the House and Senate. Even so, when the President reiterates in his address to the nation in a few weeks that this is “the most important piece of social legislation since the Social Security Act passed in the nineteen-thirties and the most important reform of our health-care system since Medicare passed in the nineteen-sixties,” he will not be exaggerating by much. Nobel Laureate and Times columnist Paul Krugman, calls the bill “a great achievement” that “establishes the principle—even if it falls somewhat short in practice—that all Americans are entitled to essential health care,” despite the fact that he has been a frequent critic of the administration and its efforts on this very bill. Jonathan Cohn, the New Republic’s health-care correspondent, calls the bill “the most ambitious piece of domestic legislation in a generation—a bill that will extend insurance coverage to tens of millions of Americans, strengthen insurance for many more, and start refashioning American medicine so that it is more efficient.” Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that exactly what we tasked Obama and the Congress with accomplishing in the first place?

Critics of the bill must come to terms with the fact that within our system of government, this is the best we can do to fix our broken health care sector. We tasked our government with solving two problems when it was only legislatively capable of actively addressing one of them. Coverage needed to made made universal or close to it. Short of a mandate, the bill is pretty successful at accomplishing the first goal. The second is bringing costs under control. Insurance has doubled in cost over the past ten years to over twelve thousand dollars a year per family. It very well may double again in the next ten. Few can afford that. I can feel the crunch already and I bet you can too. Matthew and I have spent a great deal of energy wanting, hoping, and advocating for a “public option” as an effective remedy to this. It would have done a lot, but reforming the insurance industry can only do so much. Individual doctors and the way they administer care are just as much to blame. Yet mandating a solution upon them would be madness. We must strive to make them more efficient in a very different manner and the Senate bill lays the groundwork for doing so. Curious as to how that will work? Look for an explanation in a column appearing on this site very soon.

Song of Sibyl’s inaugural Special Comment on the man who killed the public option and the Medicare buy-in plan for adults over the age of 55.

Seven presidents have tried to reform a health care system that everyone agrees is broken. Seven have failed. Now, at the dawn of his second year in office, President Obama is on the brink of a truly historic achievement. By the time Obama delivers his State of the Union address in the coming weeks, congress will have passed a bill that will offer tremendous government assistance to help millions finally get the health insurance they need and deserve. A bill that will end discriminatory practices by health insurers, outlaw the denial of coverage due to pre-existing conditions, and put a stop to the treachery of  denying coverage when people need it most.

Yet, by many accounts……Obama was one vote away from something much greater……something that would have really shook the foundation of the for-profit health insurance industry that continues to bankrupt our both our nation’s health and prosperity.

One. Vote. Away.

The man who held that vote was, of course, Joe Lieberman — the same man that was Al Gore’s running mate in the 2000 presidential elections, went on to endorse and actively campaign with John McCain in the 2008 presidential elections, and then had his chairmanship of the Senate Arms Services Committee saved by the intervention of President Obama (even though most others in the Democratic Caucus wanted it stripped away).

And what an  insidious, arrogant, and petulant creature Joe Lieberman is.

Remember in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince when Professor Snape makes the unbreakable vow to help Draco Malfoy in his quest to bring down Albus Dumbledore? Now, whenever I see Joe I imagine him making the unbreakable vow to protect the health insurance industry in their quest to destroy America. Just last week I wrote of his extensive ties to the health insurance industry in my piece “Lesson #1 from Health Care Debate: We Need Campaign Finance Reform.”:

“Even though he’s supposed to represent Connecticut, he has been recently accuses of being the “Senator from Aetna.”
Since he became a Senator in 1989, Joe has received a healthy sum of $2.4 million in campaign contributions from the health sector. Even though its true that the health insurance industry employs 22,000 people in his state, 325,500 Connecticut residents lack health care coverage (Urban Institute and Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured). I guess the health insurance people have been giving Joe more cash than the uninsured folks…. not a far-fetched idea when considering the $1.4 billion in profits the Connecticut-based Aetna raked in last year alone.”

Perhaps its because of this corruption, this unbreakable vow to protect the insurance industry in its quest to destroy America, that Joe did a complete 360 degree turn — the quintessential political flip-flop — on his position on the the Medicare buy-in plan. Not only did Lieberman campaign on the idea as the Democrats vice-presidential candidate in the 2000 election, he told his very own home-town newspaper in 2009 that he supported a plan to allow those as young as 55 to “buy-in” to Medicare (the exact same plan that he now opposes).

Say it ain’t so Joe! I beg you to run for reelection in 2012. I beg our readers to help bring you down — afterall, I bet there is a cushy seat at Aetna HQ for you to plop your skinny Jew ass right down in.

Mazel tov for killing the public option. L’Chaim for killing the Medicare buy-in. And go choke on some challah for being such a good lying sack a garbage (otherwise known as, simply, a ‘politician’).

Be angry.

- Matt

At this juncture, however, what’s most important is distilling exactly what went wrong. The grueling health care debate highlighted a number of issues that have slowly brought our democracy to its knees. This health care bill is good, but its far from great largely because it was constructed within an insidiously broken system.

This brings me to the Lesson #1 from the health care debate: WE NEED ROBUST CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM, AND WE NEED IT NOW —–

Since the beginning of our great republic, rich and powerful interests have been building a wall of influence around Washington. In 1816, Thomas Jefferson warned of this when he said: “I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

The health care debate proved that not only did we fail to crush this aristocracy in its birth, we allowed it to grow into an undermining force of our democracy.

Lets take a look at a couple of the opponents of reform or, more appropriately, the political bedfellows of the health insurance industry:

- Sen. Joe Lieberman (I – CT): Even though he’s supposed to represent Connecticut, he has been recently accuses of being the “Senator from Aetna.”
Since he became a Senator in 1989, Joe has received a healthy sum of $2.4 million in campaign contributions from the health sector. Even though its true that the health insurance industry employs 22,000 people in his state, 325,500 Connecticut residents lack health care coverage (Urban Institute and Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured). I guess the health insurance people have been giving Joe more cash than the uninsured folks…. not a far-fetched idea when considering the $1.4 billion in profits the Connecticut-based Aetna raked in last year alone.

- Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA): If you don’t remember, Senator Grassley is the guy that fed the death panel frenzy back in August when he said we should not “have a government run plan to decide when to pull the plug on grandma.” That’s funny. Not just because the comment confirmed his increasing senility, but because throughout the summer Grassley was seen hobnobbing with health care lobbyists and dining at fundraisers hosted bythe same health insurance CEOS  whom he’s received $1.3 million from over the past 6 years.

This isn’t a new phenomenon either. Back in 2003 the health industry spent $300 million on lobbying and another $300 million on campaign contributions to politicians between 2000-2003.

The health insurance industry has been buying up congress for years, now we need to take it back.

More on this subject to come. I promise. Campaign finance reform is one of my great passions, its about time I blog about it.

- Matt

This time the perpetrator is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). In his latest attempt to kill health care reform, he’s been running around the airwaves trying to convince America that the Senate health care bill would mean “higher premiums, higher taxes, and massive cuts to Medicare.” His office drafted a press release to this effect which can be found here.

If you read my recent post “Can Somebody Paint Me a Decent Picture? Part 1: Health Care Reform” you might be thinking to yourself right about now that McConnell has succeeded perpetrating this hoax on the American people but, thanks to a new analysis released by MIT, we can once again counter fiction with fact and  start setting the record straight. HEALTH CARE REFORM MEANS LOWER PREMIUMS AND BETTER COVERAGE. Period. End of story.

More specifically, the MIT analysis found that individuals would save “over $2500 at low incomes (175% of poverty), and would save $200 even at higher incomes (425% of poverty or higher).”

For families, the savings are even more substantial: approximately $7500 for low income families (at 175% of poverty) and $500 for higher incomes (425% of poverty or higher).

And don’t forget…these cost savings are in addition to increased insurance benefits and strict consumer protections against being denied coverage when you get sick.

Nice try Mitch. End of try.

One of the first and most critical steps in getting legislation through congress nowadays is selling it to the public. It’s all about how you paint the picture of what you are proposing, and how your proposals will affect average Americans. For no two issues has the slight of our politicians’ hands, the dearth of their artistic capabilities, become clearer than on health care and climate change legislation. Check out some of these public opinion numbers: merely 38% of Americans now support Obama’s health care proposal. Yep. According to Rasmussen, in a poll released on November 23, 2009, support for health care reform has hit an all-time low. Rasmussen’s numbers have always looked a little low on health care, but this isn’t Fox News we are talking about. Even worse, check out this:

“Only 16% now believe passage of the plan will lead to lower health care costs. Nearly four times as many (60%) believe the plan will increase health care costs. Most (54%) also believe passage of the plan will hurt the quality of care.”

For the rest of this post I’m going to discuss the poor framing that caused this public opinion nightmare and, then, suggest a more sensible approach. Let’s just call this “my frame is better than yours”.

Admittedly, I just as badly as anyone else wanted to frame the health care debate as a debate about morals and the character of the society in which we live. Look no further than my column “Defining the Character of our Nation: Lessons from Michael Jackson, Ted Kennedy, and the Brits” for evidence on that point. Unfortunately, this seems to appeal only to the uninsured and a few bleeding heart liberals like me.  Roughly speaking, that’s probably only 50-60 million Americans. Compare that to the 250 million that are insured. This framing simply does not make sense. Think about it, would your favorite football team allow the opponents to start off a game with a 21 point lead? Of course not.

The simple point is that health care reform should have been framed in terms of costs and the quality of care. Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) has expressed this sentiment repeatedly. In the Washington Times he said:

“I wish the president would have started the debate by explaining to the American people that our current health care system is not financially sustainable, for even another decade. Driving down health care costs should have been the focus of the debate.”

His key talking points on health care?

(1)    The biggest contributor to the U.S deficit is federal spending on health care

(2)    Medicare is on a path to go completely bankrupt in the next seven years and

(3)    The average American family will soon dish out 40% of its disposable income on health care insurance premiums.

Similarly, at Senator Tom Harkin’s (D-IA) Annual Steak Fry, which I had the privilege of attending, Senator Al Franken (D-MN) said that when the tea baggers confronted him at the Minnesota State Fair, they could agree on one thing and one thing only: that doing nothing wasn’t an option, and that lowering costs should be the central focus of legislation.

Unfortunately, though, in politics there is no tabula rasa. We can’t just scrap the health care bill and start over next year. But, change starts with you. When you talk to your skeptical family and friends about health care, try talking about the need to lower costs and increase the quality of care, and how the proposed legislation does both. Let me know how they react.

“I’m Starting With The Man In The Mirror. I’m Asking Him To Change His Ways. And No Message Could Have Been Any Clearer. If You Wanna Make The World A Better Place, Take A Look At Yourself, And Then Make A Change”

-  Lyrics from“Man in the Mirror”

At this particular and unique moment, with the public option now hanging in balance, our international image severely damaged from a recent history of such government sponsored activities as torture and extraordinary rendition, and the recent loss of both one of our nation’s greatest idealists (Kennedy) and entertainers (Jackson), it would not be imprudent for us to follow MJ’s example and take a collective look in the mirror. Will we like what we see? Will we like the man in the mirror? If the answer isn’t yes to both those questions, what is the change we need to make?

This brings us to the lesson from Ted Kennedy:

In an article he penned for Newsweek just weeks before his death, Senator Ted Kennedy described the outcome of our current health care debate as one which will critically define the character of our nation moving forward.  After all, aren’t we only as strong as the weakest among us? Not only is our current health care system immoral – if you are uninsured and get diagnosed with cancer, for example, you are 50% less likely to survive than someone with insurance – it is an international embarrassment. Yes, it works really well for the ever shrinking number of people who can afford it, but it is extremely inefficient and everyone else in the world looks at it with bewilderment. A French woman named Madeline who was recently quoted on BloggingStocks,  remarks: “What’s wrong with you Americans? Your health care system is backward, inefficient, irrational!”

She has a point. NPR recently compiled a huge amount of international health care spending data and concluded that, “While residents in Europe and Japan may pay higher insurance premiums or taxes than Americans, in the end, when all costs are added up, Americans spend more money on health care per person with fewer people covered (Data most recent available as of July 2008).” In France, where Madeline receives her own “socialist” health care, life expectancy at birth is 80.3 years, 100% of citizens and legal residents are covered, and health care costs per person per year are $3, 374. Here in the U.S., life expectancy at birth is 78.1 years, only 82% of people under 65 are covered (even less now), and we spend a whopping $6,402 per person per year.

Similarly, in a recent piece for The Guardian (UK), Michele Hanson writes: “How dare the Republicans bad-mouth our free healthcare system? If I’d been born in the US, I’d probably be dead by now…..The NHS is one of my main reasons for thanking heaven I was born here, where I know that whatever my income, our free health system will look after me.”

Now, finally, the lesson from the Brits:

The British perhaps faced a similar moment of national definition in the wake of WWII. With many of their cities destroyed, brave soldiers lost, and citizens impoverished, they were eager to come together and build a better society moving forward. Quoting a line from a British Member of Parliament in the movie Sicko, the British did some self- reflection and concluded that “If we can pay to kill people, we can pay to help people.” Remember the hundreds of billions of dollars we just spent on the war in Iraq? We live in a country where, in 2007, then President Bush sent a request for an additional $90 billion to continue the war in Iraq, but the same year vetoed a bill that would help provide health coverage to children.

The British pulled together for something other than war and created the National Health Service where everyone is covered and care is free at the point of use. Now, after many years of hard work and improvement, they not only have one of the best health care systems in the world (79 year life expectancy at birth, $2,723 health care spending per person per year), but they can look at the man in the mirror and actually like what they see.

Cheers.

Matt Horowitz

At that very moment, for the first time since his administration gave the green light to logging in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, I became disappointed with our 44^th President.  Quickly replaying in my head was a declaration that inspired euphoria on election night, but yet has me so angry now. Governing did not turn out to be quite so easy. After all, it’s now nine months later and yet change still has not come on the single issue, and key Obama agenda item, I care about changing most: health care. On that November winter night, on Chicago’s banks of Lake Michigan, Obama’s resounding claim that “Change has come to America” funneled so terribly the delusive tendency of the man he so eagerly replaced. What I know now is that, with those words, nothing could have come closer to or have been as inaccurate as President Bush’s now notorious, over six year-old, declaration of “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq. That was Obama’s George Bush moment and, judging by which side has been more visible and forceful in shaping the health care debate, it must have sent liberals into hibernation. After a long and hard election cycle, Obama sang his weary warriors a lullaby. As a result, they are now sleeping and the type of reform they were promised during the election season is sputtering; their window of opportunity closing.

While I hope that Obama’s delusive tendency is a little less severe than that of his predecessor, if liberals do not soon wake-up from their election night comatose,  it might be yet another generation until the changes Obama promised actually come to fruition. The Washington Post has called the administration’s push for health care reform the “Grass-Roots Battle [that] Tests The Obama Movement.”  Obama’s entire campaign, filled with sweeping rhetoric such as “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek,” was driven by the philosophy that grass-roots activism can fuel government and drive legislation. Has the entire spirit and hope of his campaign subsided? What about that moment when we were supposed to come together to save this planet from the rising oceans, the spreading famine or the terrible storms that devastate our lands? Without a lively grassroots effort buttressing his ideas and agenda, Obama can and will not be able to govern effectively. When Obama supporters are no longer “fired up” and “ready to go”, and when they allow themselves to be shouted down by the fringe of the Republican Party at health care town halls, something has gone terribly wrong. I remember, as a John Edwards intern leading up to the Iowa caucuses, that no one shouted louder or was more motivated for change than the activists and supporters that helped Obama emerge victorious from that state and propelled him to the Democratic nomination.

Do you remember when 60,000 people packed the largest venue in the red-state of South Carolina just to hear Obama speak? Do you remember when college students sacrificed their vacations and people old enough to be my great-grandparents braved the cold Iowa winter to caucus for Obama, sometimes standing in crowded gymnasiums for over an hour? How about when thousands of people knocked doors and made phone calls to get people to the polls in order to effectuate change? It’s time to re-ignite that flame and pass meaningful health care reform — reform that gets everyone covered, controls costs, and includes the choice of a public option.

Yes we (still) can. The only question left now is if we will.

Matt Horowitz

The reality is that such distracting rhetoric obscures the fact that thousands each year are already denied the right to life because the cost of providing care is too steep. We live in a society where powerful corporations employ CEOs at a cost of millions of dollars per year who see that they successfully overcharge the poorest, most powerless and ultimately silent majority, and deny coverage to those who need it most. While the insurance industry prospers and saw its profits quadruple over the past ten years, our government has been helpless in enacting regulations to limit the human cost of our health crisis.

While finding an exact number of the health coverage crisis casualties is virtually impossible, the estimates range anywhere from 18,000 to 100,000 per year. To put this in perspective, less than 4,700 have died while serving in Iraq since 2001. According to a landmark study, “Care Without Coverage: Too Little, Too Late,” uninsured people with colon or breast cancer face a 50% higher risk of death. Uninsured trauma victims are less likely to be admitted to the hospital, receive the full range of needed services, and are 37% more likely to die of their injuries. Further, about 25% of adult diabetics without insurance for a year or more went without a checkup for two years. That boosts their risk of death, blindness and amputations resulting from poor circulation. Regardless, these numbers are useless without a human face. Below are a few stories that I hope will drive home the gravity of the situation:

-In February of 2007 12-year-old Deamonte Driver complained of a toothache at school one Thursday. His mother, however, could not afford private dental insurance and he did not receive any care. By Saturday he was having emergency surgery because an abscess had spread to his brain. A few weeks later he died. $80 would have paid for a simple tooth extraction and saved his life.

-In December of 2007, 17-year-old Nataline Sarkiyan succumbed to a long battle with liver cancer because her insurance company initially refused to pay. When a new liver that would have saved her life became available Cigna, her insurance company, took her off the liver transplant list not once, but twice and purposely waited until literally hours before her death to approve the transplant because they didn’t want to pay for her after-care.

-David Williams, a 58-year-old Vietnam Veteran and guitarist for Madonna, Michael Jackson, Jessica Simpson, Lionel Richie and Van Halen suffering from complications related to high blood pressure, collapsed and was taken to Sentara Hospital in Hampton, Virginia only a few months ago. He slipped into a coma and the hospital urged his wife, Deborah to pull the plug because he had no medical insurance. She very publicly complained about the hospital’s callous actions: “During this very difficult time where our focus should be on the nurturing and care of David, we are battling with hospital officials just to get and maintain the care he deserves, a hospital whose main interest lies in his ability to pay for his care.” He passed away on March 6th.

-Just this month Fred Holliday, 39, succumbed to kidney cancer in his home. He probably had had the disease for years, but with no health insurance, he couldn’t afford the tests that might have explained the night sweats, fatigue and bloody urine. By the time he finally got a job that came with health coverage and got the tests he needed, it was too late: the cancer had spread and was inoperable. On August 31st, his widow and two young children will tragically lose the health coverage that Mr. Holliday works so hard to attain. His dying wish was for his wife Regina to “go after them” and that is exactly what she is doing.

If I have done my job, you should understand fully that the health insurance giants are the true villains, not government-provided insurance, which has had a great deal of success in providing our seniors with the coverage they deserve through Medicare. No one should be denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition, or forced to pay premiums that cause families to decide between food, shelter or health insurance. We must continue to fight for a public option. Let your federal lawmakers know that they will not have your vote in 2010 and beyond unless they control costs and provide a viable alternative to private insurance. Fight with these families and others who lost loved ones simply because they could not afford to care for them. Do not let anyone you care about become one of the thousands sentenced to die because of corporate greed.