What Can We Learn From the Movement for Health Care Reform?

[IndianaGreen]

What Can We Learn From the Movement for Health Care Reform?

by: David Bell
February 2 2010

Although qualifiers should not be necessary, I feel compelled to give one so as not to detract from the main message. There is no question in my mind that the support for Obama's election was, without question, the correct decision for all the reasons given before and during the campaign. Of particular note was that his victory would change the playing field, enable us to take the offensive, and raise issues that have been missing from the agenda for decades. However, with Obama's victory, paradoxically, the CPUSA continued its defensive posture of the past several years, and in some ways retreated even further. At a time when we all agreed that the moment was ripe for building the Party in numbers and influence, rather than see Obama as an ally, we treated him as the leader of "his coalition." We seemed to be reluctant to take positions that would strengthen him for fear that it would be interpreted as opposition siding with the right. Why was it necessary in a fine article opposing the escalation in Afghanistan to spend half of it defending Obama's victory and saying that it is not the same as a McCain victory? At every step, must we assure people and a small left of the obvious and dilute the real message.

Our position on the health care debate is an example of how we took a leadership position as early as 2004 during the Bush years when we published "Medicare for All!" and then began to retreat and tail during the 2008 election campaign and continue until now. Specifically:

Until mid 2008, when Health Care for America Now (HCAN) was founded, single payer was supported by close to 60% of the population and almost 50% by physicians. Single payer gained momentum from H. R. 676 and had many organizations fighting for single payer at the state level. Hardly, as claimed, HCAN was and is not a grassroots organization. To this day it is very top heavy and often secretive about its next moves. I belong to an organization in Philadelphia that is a member of HCAN that has never been included in its decision making process. SEIU and advisors to Clinton on health care pushed HCAN even before the Democratic Convention. It is suspected by some that Obama advisors who did not support single payer were also behind HCAN.

The immediate effect was to confuse and divide those fighting for meaningful reform. It disunited the movement. The HCAN approach was to argue against single payer because it took a pragmatic approach that single payer did not have a chance and that sections of HCAN did not support single payer as policy. Please note, this pragmatic view was put forward before the 2008 elections thus making it difficult to push those running for election in a unified direction. Giving up its leadership position, the CPUSA contributed to this division and confusion by the masses and in its own ranks. Its knee jerk reaction was to support the HCAN approach (public option, which they gave up on pretty easily when the Senate debate began) because it was pragmatic and was supported by several trade unions. Did we forget the fact that many of the same unions, hundreds of locals, and the rank and file supported single payer? We also turned away from our allies in Congress, the Progressive Caucus, and John Conyers. We did not insist that single payer supporters, including Conyers, be included in the White House summit on health care reform.

To make things worse, articles in the then PWW labeled elements of single payer as sectarian giving the impression of a significant trend. The articles then began to mention single payer in passing as simply an ideal. This is not leadership.

http://cpusa.org/convention-discussion-what-can-we-learn-from-the-movement-for-health-care-reform/