Washington Talks About Health Care, But Doesn't Offer a Cure

By John Nichols, The Nation. Posted March 9, 2009.

Health care reform is a vital and engaging concern for America - and for Americans.

But you would not know it from Thursday's White House Forum on Health Reform, which was so narrowly focused and uninspiring that it almost made Hillary Clinton's bumbling efforts of the 1990s look good.

President Obama sounded some of the right notes:

Now I know people are skeptical about whether Washington can bring about this change. Our inability to reform health care in the past is just one example of how special interests have had their way, and the public interest has fallen by the wayside. And I know people are afraid we'll draw the same old lines in the sand, give in to the same entrenched interests, and arrive back at the same stalemate we've been stuck in for decades.

But I am here today because I believe that this time is different. This time, the call for reform is coming from the bottom up, from all across the spectrum - from doctors, nurses and patients; unions and businesses; hospitals, health care providers and community groups. It's coming from mayors, governors and legislatures - Democrats and Republicans - who are racing ahead of Washington to pass bold health care initiatives on their own. This time, there is no debate about whether all Americans should have quality, affordable health care -- the only question is, how?

Unfortunately, that is a mighty major "only question."

And the people who in the past have answered it wrong were in the room and at the table Thursday. Indeed, they were bragging about their successes in blocking past reform initiatives. "I don't see what happened in the '90s as a failure," Congressman Joe Barton, the Texas conservative who is the ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, told a breakout session at Thursday's forum.

Barton was not an outlier.

The East Room at the White House was packed with the political players, union leaders and corporate lobbyists -- some of them good, many of them bad -- and a few administration-designated "Everyday Americans," who helped to illustrate the depth of the crisis that the insiders have allowed to metastasize over the past decade or so.

Only a handful of serious reformers got in the room.

Thanks to pressure from the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Healthcare, Physicians for a National Health Program, Unions for Single Payer Health Care and the Progressive Democrats of America, an invitation was extended to House Judiciary Committee chair John Conyers, D-Michigan, the sponsor of H.R. 676, legislation that seeks to create a the single-payer insurance program that would take profiteering out of the health care system.

A few other real reformers were heard from -- including Californian Congressman Pete Stark.

And Dr. Oliver Fein, the director of Physicians for a National Health Plan was in the room.

But right before the doctor from Physicians for a National Health Plan on the White House list of "Community Leaders and Stakeholders Expected to Attend" were the CEOs of Pfizer and Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA).

And while the doctor was not included on any of the lists of breakout session speakers, the CEOs were, along with representatives of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, America's Health Insurance Plans, the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and the Business Roundtable.

In other words, the overwhelming weight of opinion at what was supposed to be a wide-ranging discussion of health reform was -- at best -- on the side of tinkering with the existing for-profit system.

Change we can believe in was not on the agenda.

Who could have put it there?

Dr. Quentin Young, the Chicago physician who served as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s personal physician and whose medical office once included a young Chicago activist named Barack Obama on its patient list, ought to be at the table. Here's Young discussing his support for single payer.

And where, on the lost list of members of Congress present, was the name of U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin? Elected to Congress as an outspoken advocate for single-payer health care, the Wisconsin Democrat is a member of the key committee in the House that deals with health care issues -- Energy and Commerce -- and she has succeeded in developing bipartisan coalitions that allow for state experimentation with various reform plans. In other words, she's a principled yet very practical player in the debate.

Baldwin should have been speaking.

So, too, should have been the working nurses of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), the union that represents 85,000 RNs in all 50 states.

Ardent advocates for real reform, CNA/NNOC members correctly argue that: "Insurance-based reform will fail, and undermine public trust; only Medicare for All can achieve administration goals"

Here's what the nurses are saying:

While welcoming President Obama's call for achieving "comprehensive" healthcare reform this year, "a laudable commitment and a huge departure from the dismal healthcare policies of the past eight years," the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee warned that most of proposals floating around Congress would default on the promise and principles set by the administration.

"And, they would almost certainly fail to contain the rising costs that put so many families in peril or to repair our broken healthcare system," said CNA/NNOC Co-president Geri Jenkins, RN.

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John Nichols is The Nation's Washington correspondent.

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