129 sponsors for public option bill

By David Loud

What a year it’s been working on healthcare reform - a milestone year in an ongoing struggle for healthcare justice. It’s worth noting that President Theodore Roosevelt first called for national health care in 1912, and that successive Presidents tried and failed to move this agenda. When President Obama signed the Affordable Health Care Act into law in March, it was the biggest step forward in a century of trying. This law is flawed and incomplete, but it represents a historic victory. As Congressman Jim McDermott has said recently, “That was our D-Day, and now we’re on the beaches.” The opponents of reform would like to push us back into the water in November, and the advocates of reform know that to survive we must fight to defend and improve on what’s been achieved.

A bill to amend the Affordable Care Act to establish a public health insurance option was filed in the House in July. HR 5808 has 129 cosponsors, including Congressman McDermott. Single-payer (a publicly-funded national plan for all) remains the best policy idea, and many are working to promote it at both the state and national levels.

The ongoing rise in healthcare costs will force people to revisit the question of whether we will be able to afford healthcare for all as long as long as private insurance and profiteering have so much power in the system.

I hope all of us will find some way to help keep our country from moving further to the right in the November elections. It would be tragic if understandable disappointments in getting “change we can believe in” since 2008 lead people to allow Republicans to gain the power to push us backwards. Probably more important than anything else will be getting out the vote – persuading people that it does really matter this year, as much as it did in 2008.

(David Loud is a member of PSARA.)