Honoring Paul Wellstone’s Legacy: Fighting Like Hell for Health Care Reform

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Honoring Paul Wellstone’s Legacy: Fighting Like Hell for Health Care Reform
By: MikeElk Wednesday July 15, 2009 3:42 pm


I had the rare privilege of meeting one of my heroes, Paul Wellstone, shortly before his death in 2002 when I visited Washington as part of a conference for high school students interested in politics. We had the opportunity to meet several senators during our time in Washington, but Paul Wellstone treated us differently -- more like we were friends coming over for a cup of coffee than a bunch of nerdy high school students on a trip. He insisted that we not call him "senator," but instead simply Paul.

While other senators were going on and on about their accomplishments or telling corny jokes, Paul went around and asked what issues were important to us and what we were doing currently to advocate for these policies. He suggested ideas about how we could become more involved, more effective, and what other issues we might want to get involved in. He encouraged us "to go out and fight because that was the only way change has ever been achieved." Paul's faith in my ability to achieve social change inspired me so much that I spent the rest of my summer volunteering full time to help elect Ed Rendell as governor in Pennsylvania.

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While Paul spent the most of his career in the minority, he did indeed spend a very brief time in the majority in 1993-1994 when Democrats had the opportunity to pass a health care reform. However, Democrats caved to the insurance companies' lobbyists and no comprehensive health care reform was passed. As Mike Lux, a top Clinton aide at the time argued in his book The Progressive Revolution, Democrats were then swept out of power for their inability to stand up to special interests. Democrats would remain in the wilderness for the rest of Wellstone's tenure in the Senate.

If Democrats fail to deliver on a strong public health insurance plant that an overwhelming 76% favor according to the Wall Street Journal, they too will fail as a party. Reforming health care is about standing up to the big special interests that are spending $1.4 million every day on an army of lobbyists so that they can continue to deny people the health care they need.

Furthermore, health care reform is literally about saving lives. Democrats should avoid looking for some easy compromise on health care with the insurance industry that would deny some people care in order to score a quick legislative victory.

As Wellstone said, "Politics is not about power. Politics is not about money. Politics is not about winning for the sake of winning. Politics is about the improvement of people's lives. It's about advancing the cause of peace and justice in our country and the world. Politics is about doing well for the people."

Beating the insurance industry is going to be one of the toughest fights we as a movement have ever engaged in. Unfortunately, we don't have Paul Wellstone around to fight for us anymore. However, we do have the people that Wellstone believed in the most -- ourselves. So I say its about time that we ask ourselves, What Would Wellstone Do?

Let's fight like hell. Let's win one for Paul!

[midnight]

1. A Wellstone healthcare reform that would make medicare

healthcare delivery to everyone.