Honoring Paul Wellstone: Fighting Like Hell for Health Care Reform

By Mike Elk, AlterNet. Posted July 15, 2009.

Last week, Al Franken, a friend of Paul's who had been inspired to run for office by Paul's death, took back Paul's old seat from Republican Norm Coleman. After reading, I found myself wondering of what Paul would be doing now if he was still a U.S. senator.  Paul had spent the majority of his career in the minority party in the Senate.  In his book "Conscience of a Liberal," Paul admitted that in his time in the U.S. Senate he spent nearly 85 percent of his time defending against Republican attacks on working families and he never had the opportunity to fight for things like the big reform measures that he craved. I thought about how Paul would be down on the floor of the Senate  to talk about the 20,000 people that die every year due to a lack of health coverage,  or to talk about how his access to quality health care as a United States senator allowed him to continue having a productive life despite his semi-debilitating  multiple sclerosis.

While Paul spent the most of his career in the minority, he did indeed spend a very brief time in the majority in 1993-1994 when Democrats had the opportunity to pass a health care reform. However, Democrats caved to the insurance companies' lobbyists and no comprehensive health care reform was passed. As Mike Lux, a top Clinton aide at the time argued in his book "The Progressive Revolution," Democrats were then swept out of power for their inability to stand up to special interests. Democrats would remain in the wilderness for the rest of  Wellstone's tenure in the Senate.

If Democrats fail to deliver on a strong public health insurance plant that an overwhelming 76% favor according to the Wall Street Journal, they too will fail as a party. Reforming health care is about standing up to the big special interests that are spending $1.4 million every day on an army of lobbyists so that they can continue to deny people the health care  they need.

Furthermore, health care reform is literally about saving lives. Democrats should avoid looking for some easy compromise on health care with the insurance industry  that would deny some people care in order to score a quick legislative victory.

As Wellstone said, "Politics is not about power. Politics is not about money. Politics is not about winning for the sake of winning. Politics is about the improvement of people's lives. It's about advancing the cause of peace and justice in our country and the world. Politics is about doing well for the people."

Beating the insurance industry is going to be one of the toughest fights we as a movement have ever engaged in. Unfortunately, we don't have Paul Wellstone around to fight for us anymore. However, we do have the people that Wellstone believed in the most -- ourselves. So I say its about time that we ask ourselves, What Would Wellstone Do?

Let's fight like hell.  Let's win one for Paul!

See more stories tagged with: democrats, lobbyists, single payer, public option, paul wellstone

Mike Elk is a third-generation union organizer who writes for Campaign for America's Future. He previously worked for the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE).

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