In the past few weeks we’ve begun to see e-mails, face book groups, and other communications calling for a March on Washington to support health care reform. Yesterday, sTiVo at Firedog Lake called for one, and one facebook group is trying to get one going for September 13th. I also think that a March for health care reform would be a good idea. The reason for it is that the dynamic of internal Washington legislative processes has grabbed health care reform by the scruff of the neck and dragged its dynamic sharply to the right. The undemocratic power structure comprised of industry lobbyists and embedded congressional caudillos from small and unrepresentative rural states, the “rotten boroughs” of American politics, is blocking reform with a significant public component designed to evolve toward Medicare for All, and is threatening to substitute for such an outcome a series of changes that will end some of the worst insurance abuses, but retain the structure of abuse and accelerating cost inflation, while extracting the price of a giveaway of an expanded market for the insurance companies backed by mandates and subsidies at the cost of at least $1 Trillion.
The movement towards that kind of result needs to be changed through a severe shakeup of the dynamics of Congress, and the best idea for causing such a shakeup is a March on Washington reminiscent of the Marches for Civil Rights and ending the Vietnam War in the ’60s, and the more recent million man march. Such a March is not only simply for the purpose of producing one and getting Congress to take Medicare for All seriously; but also for the purpose of solidifying a powerful progressive movement independent of the President’s left-over campaign structure and the Democratic Party. Both have been fully penetrated by corporate interests and currently support efforts to triangulate on “the center-right” and marginalize the progressive movement. Organizing a March on Washington for health care reform could create the lists and social networks progressives need to seed a new party of our own, should the present Administration continue its efforts at selling out progressive positions, both in health care reform and additional issue areas. And the very existence of these social networks should create a force on the left that will give the Democratic members of congress and also the Administration greater pause when they’re thinking of drifting to the right on key issues.
So, I’m all for us organizing a March on Washington in support of health care reform. However, let’s not go through all the effort of a mobilization and a March for what’s morally right, only to support the inadequate bill that we see in HR 3200, or for some vague and general principle that Congress can pervert with some sell-out bill that won’t solve the problems of health insurance reform. Instead, we really need to March for what’s right and what we believe in; i.e. Medicare for All, as represented in HR 676; not for some policy wonk’s compromise with the health insurance companies like the public option, and certainly not for HR 3200.
If after the March and the greatest amount of pressure we can muster, Congress still believes it must compromise with the vested interests to get a bill through, then let them pass a Jacob Hacker-type PO (much stronger than HR 3200) bill as a last-ditch compromise. But let’s make it clear during the March, that if they betray us with HR 3200, or a bill that is even weaker than that in its public component, then they will pay a heavy price for such a decision in 2010, perhaps even including having to run against a new party, with the explicit objective of replacing the Democratic Party as the party that fulfills the historic mission that the Democratic Party has refused to fulfill for thirty-odd years now, the mission of looking out for working people.
Even though I think the March should be for HR 676 and Medicare for All, I also think that the March should be open to all those in favor of reform including those supporting the PO. But I think that we need to leave it to Congress to come up with final compromises. For us to pre-compromise health care issues as some progressive organizations have done so far has cost us a great deal in this fight. It’s because Move-on, HCAN, and DFA, have marginalized Medicare for All and explicitly supported only the PO, that the weak PO bill, HR 3200, came out of the House committees. If these “progressive organziations” had been uncompromising in advocating HR 676, and had promoted it, and whipped Congress about it, I believe that we would have gotten a Jacob Hacker-type of PO out of the House committees that we could settle for with a clear conscience, rather than the crippled PO in HR 3200.
If we further compound this error now, and explicitly march for what essentially is HR 3200, as so many people are suggesting, I think that many Medicare for All people will simply stay home because they think that HR 3200 is a travesty that is sure to fail and hurt future efforts at health care reform. Marching for the PO therefore, won’t be inclusive of all the most intense supporters of health care reform with a public component. If we want to have the most inclusive position for a March, I think that position actually is a March for HR 676, or Medicare for All. It strengthens both the political positions of Medicare for All and PO supporters, and therefore can be a unifying effort.
(Also posted at firedoglake.com where there may be more comments)