Fixing Our Health Care System Means Getting to 60 Senate Votes

by Mike Hall, Mar 18, 2008

Given that 47 million Americans are without health insurance and as many as 40 percent who have coverage are underinsured, the 2008 election is likely to be a mandate on health care for all, a panel of health care and political experts told a Take Back America symposium today. The annual conference, in Washington, D.C., which runs through Wednesday, brings together activists and organizers to discuss strategies for moving progressive strategies that address the economy, foreign policy, health care and more.

Jacob Hacker, an economist and political science professor at Yale University and author of the Health Care for America proposal, said health care advocates need to develop a “template” that doesn’t compromise core health care principles but one that also can win the political support needed to be enacted.

There are a lot of good ideas out there that don’t stand a chance of passage and there are a lot of bad ideas out there that seem to be in favor among certain constituencies and the hope is one can put one really good alternative on the table that can be passed.

The Health Care for America plan parallels many of the same principles the AFL-CIO is calling for, including comprehensive coverage. Health Care for America builds on the best portions of the U.S. health care, including employer-based coverage and Medicare, while controlling costs and calling for shared responsibility among employers, the government and individuals. Hacker’s plan was developed for the Economic Policy Institute’s (EPI’s) Agenda for a Shared Prosperity. (Click here for the latest detailed cost and coverage analysis of the Health Care for America proposal.)

Even as the health care forum took place, the Kaiser Family Foundation released a new report that shows the longer health care reform is delayed, the more costly it becomes for employers to provide health coverage. It found the cost of employer-paid heath insurance has jumped by nearly 62 percent since 1999. Today’s costs are sure to be even higher because the latest available statistics were from 2005.

People of color are among those hardest hit by the nation’s crumbling health care system. As Dr. Maya Rockeymoore, founder and president of Global Policy Solutions, said at the conference:

African Americans, Latinos, Asians are less than 30 percent of the nation’s population but they are more than 50 percent of the nation’s year-around uninsured…we have a broken system.

Ezra Klein, who covers politics and health care issues for the American Prospect, told the group that no matter which health care plan advocates support, they must have a viable political strategy for passage, especially in the U.S. Senate, where a minority of members can more easily block bills than in the House. What’s at stake, Klein says, is getting the 60 votes needed in the Senate for a filibuster-proof bill.

Health care is not so much a policy problem as it is a political problem. The policy questions are nearly solved. Now, maybe you can get some Republicans on your side because they like your idea, or maybe you’re going to make them afraid to oppose it. But either way, you’re going to need a couple of them to hit that magic 60.

Read more from Klein’s blog about the Take Back America conference.

Hacker described how many of America’s families are experiencing the same financial duress as Arnold Dorsett, a New York air conditioner repairman who’s paid $70,000 a year—and yet whose family is filing for bankruptcy because of health care costs.

He makes that $70,000 a year because he is working 90-hour weeks. The reason he is working 90 hours a week and why his wife is staying home taking care of the children is that because his son, Zachary, has a rare immune system disorder. At the time the immune disorder was diagnosed, the family had insurance and had already run up $30,000 in credit card bills to pay for their health care. Not only that, they can’t make their car payments, they can’t make their mortgage payments, they can’t keep up with the daily expenses, so eventually they decide to file for bankruptcy.

In 2005, Hacker said some 2 million families filed for bankruptcy and half of those bankruptcies were due in part to medical bills.

Arnold Dorsett is not alone. There are millions of families like the Dorsett’s. There are millions of families who think they are protected, until someone gets sick. Private insurance has essentially failed.

(Click here to read some of the individual health care stories sent in by the 27,000 respondents to the AFL-CIO’s 2008 Health Care for America Survey.)

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