That was some Summit

Suffering at home with a head cold, I had the opportunity to watch today’s White House Health Care Summit in real time.  As is obvious from the commentaries careening around the airwaves and the blogosphere, observers saw in the event that which they wanted to see.  To my mind, what happened today was actually more a case of greasing the skids for passage of a bill on both sides of the Capitol Building, of the President telling the House and Senate “You will work this out, period.” He reminded the legislators, time and time again, that going ahead with the construction of a more rational healthcare system is an exigent national necessity.

Many of my progressive and liberal brethren have taken to excoriating the President and the Democratic majority for not magically creating the sort of system that we’d like—if not single-payer, at least a robust public option.  At the risk of being accused of Blue Doggery or Conservademism, or selling out to the corporate elite, I’ve understood all along that the sausage-making legislative process can be frustratingly slow, heavily laden with deals and compromises.  To say nothing of the appreciable differences between the House and Senate versions of the HCR bill.

Political newbies, those millions of Americans whose only real experience with the system had been participation in the 2008 primaries and election campaign, had and have no familiarity with the nitty-gritty of developing and passing legislation.  I’m no grizzled veteran of the political machine, but for almost 10 years I worked closely with a federal agency (CMS, née HCFA) and with the lobbyists for the national association of Medicare QIOs.  Several posts here focused on my QIO jobs—“Have a magical day..." (February 2003), Scully ... The X-Administrator Files? (August 2003), Medicare flim-flam from the Orwell Administration (September 2004), Wi-Fi on the beach (June 2005).

So I’m more than passingly familiar with regulations and legislation.  In addition, I cut my primary/elections teeth one Presidential cycle earlier, with the Dean campaign in 2002-2004.  Whether that makes me knowledgeable or jaded (it could, of course, be both) is a conclusion I’ll leave up to you, the viewer.

My catch-phrase in the HCR saga, through all the highs and (more numerous) lows of its meanders through the halls of Congress, has been Lao-tzu’s

The longest journey begins with a single step

There have been federal efforts to create a more rational healthcare system for decades and decades.  Whether you trace it back to Theodore Roosevelt or his cousin Franklin, there has been only very limited success.  In actuality, over those many years no HCR legislation has made it through Congress except Medicare and Medicaid in 1966.  In the 40-plus years since, those programs have been slightly expanded and somewhat tweaked, but no new programs or real system modernizations have been seen.

In 2010, then, with a teetering world economy, the still-festering lesions of the poisonous Bush years, immense deficit spending, a Republican Party devoted solely to obstructing anything proposed by the Democrats (even provisions originally proposed by Republicans), corporatist conservative Democrats, Senatorial timidity, and tactical errors by the Obama Administration, it’s astonishing that we’re on the brink of taking that hugely-difficult small step.  But after the Summit today, I’m increasingly confident that the House and Senate leadership will be able to collaborate to build a reasonably strong bill for the President to sign.  IMHO, during the Summit Obama regularly schooled the GOP.  And several Democrats (Tom Harkin, Dick Durbin, Charley Rangel, Nancy Pelosi) made strong, albeit emotional and anecdotal, remarks.

For me, though, perhaps the most meaningful speaker was this one, especially in his closing statement:

John D. Dingell, Jr. has represented Michigan’s 15th Congressional District since 1955 (well, it was renumbered to the 16th for much of those 54 years, but he had this number at the start and in the present).  He is, in fact, the longest-serving Representative in the history of the House.  Dingell was there when Medicare was crafted and passed.  Even more remarkably, Dingell won the seat upon the death of his father, John D. Dingell, Sr., who had served in the House for 22 years ... ever since MI-15’s creation in 1933.  Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, Inkster, Romulus, and their environs have been represented in Washington by a John Dingell for over three-quarters of a century!

Dingell’s Biblical reference directly addresses another of my favorite aphorisms for this Session of Congress, from Voltaire:

The perfect is the enemy of the good

I bet he’d find common cause with the one referenced earlier.  Heaven knows he’s been there, looking for a way to take that single step, for a long, long time.

Comments

“Many of my progressive and liberal brethren have taken to excoriating the President and the Democratic majority for not magically creating the sort of system that we’d like—if not single-payer, at least a robust public option.  At the risk of being accused of Blue Doggery or Conservademism, or selling out to the corporate elite, I’ve understood all along that the legislative process can be frustratingly slow, heavily laden with deals and compromises.”

I agree.  It was never realistic to believe that “Change” would happen in a blink of an eye and without facing the need for political compromise.  So many people who voted for Obama tried to fashion him to the kind of president they wanted in their mind, rather than the left-centrist he always was going to be, setting themselves up for nothing but dissappointment.

----------------------

Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.

<< Back to main