By SHAWN DOHERTY
The Capital Times (Madison, Wis.), Nov. 21, 2010
Dr. Margaret Flowers, a leader of the single-payer health care movement, was in town this week to drum up support for the Madison chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP). The Baltimore pediatrician was arrested on the floor of the U.S. Senate in 2009 during the health care hearings for trying to get a seat at the bargaining table. I decided to check out a couple of her events to see what she had to say now about the state of single-payer reform, commonly referred to as “Medicare for All.”
I also wanted to find out what her audience had to say. How were local health care activists feeling in the wake of a nasty electoral beating? Maybe I could blog about how depressed they all were, I thought. If they even showed up. A lot of “experts” have declared their cause a goner.
Well, the fight for single-payer health care reform ain’t dead yet. Or, if it is, some people are in denial.
Around 60 people showed up at Madison’s Labor Temple to talk with Flowers on Wednesday, and 40 at a Friday fundraiser at the EVP Coffee House on Mineral Point, and they seemed more fired up than they have been for a couple of years now, almost as fired up as they were in the heady days of the Obama campaign. Republican victories and problems with the national health care act have only made them more determined, some said. “It’s not depressing, it’s motivating,” said Meaghan Combs, a resident at the UW Madison School of Medicine.
Alexandra Thebert, PNHP’s national organizer, said fundraising and membership are growing faster this year than last year, when the group was shoved aside in the push to pass Obama’s more moderate reforms. “It’s more frenetic than ever,” she claims. “We’re swamped up to the gills.”
Are they in dreamland? Not at all, she said. But the rest of the country is. Our current system of is unsustainable, Thebert said. Even if Obama’s reforms withstand Republican attacks, they are “totally doomed,” she said. “Costs will skyrocket and millions of people still won’t be covered. What we’re doing is educating people so that when it collapses they know about a system that works.”
The mood at these gatherings was defiant. Flowers greeted the crowd Friday with a sarcastic joke. “I’m a little puzzled,” she said. “Why is everybody here? Didn’t we already pass health care reform?” “No!” the audience shouted. “We are undaunted,” Flowers said. “The insurance companies have tremendous resources, but we can match them with our spirit.”
At Wednesday’s session, a listener asked about what some people see as a downside of single-payer reform. “What will happen to the insurance companies?” she asked. “They’ll go to hell!” several audience members retorted, as others laughed.
There were the same old familiar faces, minus one of the most beloved, staunch single-payer champion Dr. Linda Farley, who died in 2009. Her husband, Dr. Gene Farley, showed up, with Wisconsin labor leader David Newby, now retired. State Sen. Mark Miller, D-Monona, was also there, and outgoing state Rep. Chuck Benedict, D-Beloit, both past sponsors of failed state legislation with single-payer provisions in them. And a passel of longtime activists and doctors, including Laurel Mark, head of the Madison PNHP chapter and a family practitioner with UW Health. Mark sported a pin she had first worn to a march in New York City in 1975. It read: “Healthcare for People Not Profit.”
Mark said she had invited the national organizers to come to town and stay at her house even before this month’s election to infuse the local movement with new energy, dollars, and members. “We’re not just going to sit in a corner and be depressed and suck our thumbs,” she said. “We are going to move this forward.”
It is time, Flowers told supporters, to shift their efforts from getting Obama elected, and then trying (mostly in vain) to have a say in the national legislation, to pushing for action at the state level. Vermont legislators have already hired a Harvard consultant to draft plans for a statewide single-payer program.
Our country pays more than any other industrialized country for its health care yet gets much less in terms of fairness and affordability, according to surveys. Republican and Tea Party critics of the current system blame big government; single-payer activists blame big industry. The U.S. is the only industrialized nation “stupid enough,” Dr. Farley said, to allow corporate profits to run the show. Rep. Benedict, a retired neurologist, also blamed our health care crisis on what he called “the profiteers,” noting that he believed “health care ought to be a right.”
Republicans like to interpret their recent victories as a mandate to dismantle health care reform. But polls show the situation is more nuanced than that. Many people unhappy with the national reforms are single payer advocates who felt it did not go far enough. So Republican efforts to dismantle it completely could backfire, activists say, leading to another electoral shakeup. “They might throw everybody out again in another two years and we’ve got to be ready,” said Susan Carson, a retired Madison physician. “The Republicans are going to do everything they can to bollix up reform,” agreed state Sen. Miller, soon to become the minority leader. “That can present us with another opportunity.”
There was a bit of an I-told-you-so feeling in the meetings I attended, a belief that if Obama had not backed away from his campaign support of single-payer reform then Democrats might not have been clobbered so heartily at the voting booths. Politicians would have been seen as more forceful, and progressive voters may have been more motivated to vote, the theory went. It’s not that hardcore single-payer supporters were gloating, exactly. But they were angry. “It’s important that people realize that the labor unions and more moderate health care organizations worked with Barack Obama to make sure we were marginalized,” said John Stauber, founder of the Center for Media and Democracy, at Wednesday’s meeting. “A lot of people in this room were played for suckers.”
Such bitterness creates what Mark called a “dilemma” for some of the activists, who wondered out loud whether they should bother to defend a national health care law they never really believed in or simply focus on pushing for a single-payer system again. Dr. Marc Hansen said Obama’s efforts deserved more support than the “faint praise” they were getting from the group. “We better protect what’s been gained before we kick it out the door,” he argued.
Several in the crowd compared the single-payer movement with all its ups and downs to the Civil Rights battle and the fight for a woman’s right to vote, and predicted that ultimately they will win this historical struggle, too. “We are not going to stop,” said Karen Matteoni, a Madison mother and retired utility worker.
Flowers also conducted grand rounds with doctors at local hospitals during the week and met with around 50 UW-Madison medical students, five of whom pledged to start a PNHP chapter at their school.
All in all, it was a good week, Mark said. “It was a disastrous election for us, let’s face it,” she said. “Nonetheless, I saw much more optimism than I had expected. People are still engaged and willing to keep working. And that’s what we need to do.”