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Another try at national health care reform

Shawn Doherty  —  7/08/2008 5:12 pm

Here we go again.

The latest campaign to reform the country's health care system opened with a splash Tuesday, holding simultaneous news conferences in the Wisconsin state capitol and 52 other cities across the country.

Health Care for America Now introduced itself as an "unprecedented" coalition of labor, community organizations, doctors, nurses, businesses, churches, and grass roots activists determined to make the decades-long battle for health care reform a reality by 2009.

"Which side are you on? Are you on the side of quality, affordable health care? Or are you on the side of being left alone to fend for yourself in a complicated bureaucratic insurance market?" asked Robert Kraig, director of Citizen Action of Wisconsin and one of the national campaign's local organizers.

It was the opening salvo in what organizers promise will be a $40 million effort that will finally galvanize the public to take on the status quo. "

The money has been against us," said Eugene S. Farley, a retired doctor from Verona who has crisscrossed the state to drum up support for affordable health care. Agreed his wife, Dr. Linda Farley, "Are we hurting enough yet? That's really what it's about."

The campaign is courting grass roots support, but it's also counting on high-powered help from a subsidiary of one of the country's top political advertising firms, GMMB, which has done work for presidential candidate Barack Obama, Kraig said. The national campaign has also hired one of the country's top Washington DC pollsters, Celinda Lake, added Kraig.

If Tuesday's news conference in Madison is any measure, the new campaign's carefully crafted message will be short on specifics but big on passion.

"Health care should be a right in America, not a privilege," said Lesli Wright, a home health care nurse.

"The system is broken and needs a total overhaul," said Leon Burzynski, president of the Wisconsin Alliance for Retired Americans. "It is a catastrophe."

Rev. Joe Jackson of the Evergreen Missionary Baptist Church in Milwaukee framed the issue as a moral and spiritual imperative.

"No issue of social justice is more fundamental than the right to decent, affordable health care," he said. "Our nation and people can not wait."

There were also plenty of the heartbreaking stories resulting from problems with health care coverage that by now are all too familiar.

Guy Costello, a vice president with the Wisconsin Education Association Council, talked about a young girl in Platteville whose teeth were so rotten she couldn't benefit from speech therapy. Cathy Leonard, a dairy farmer from Holland, teared up as she talked about how she and her husband struggled to pay for health care out of their milk check. And Dr. Aaron Dunn, the director of a free clinic in Dodgeville, talked about a patient so crippled she could no longer do chores on the farm, yet her insurance refused to cover treatment.

"That's a crime," Dunn said. "We have created an environment where I am not able to put the health care of my patients as No. 1."

At the news conference, there appeared to be more advocates holding signs than reporters covering them -- but that doesn't matter, said Kraig, who is also the coordinator of the state branch of Health Care for American Now. The news conferences were more symbolic than anything else, he explained. The real work will be done on the ground.

As soon as the news conferences ended, a $1.5 million advertising spot hit select cable television markets. The organization took out a small ad in The New York Times and a few other national newspapers Tuesday. And over the next few days more than 5 million households will be receiving an "e-mail blast" -- targeted mailings on their home and office computers.

Advocates stressed that the national campaign this time has more urgency than ever, pointing to the growing numbers of Americans who currently lack adequate health care insurance as well as the rising costs of health care and the plight of many financially strapped state Medicaid and Medicare programs.

"This is not something like shopping for a new car that you can put off," said Steve Williams, the political coordinator with AFSCME Council 24. "It's time to no longer talk the talk, but to walk the walk."

But will this latest incarnation of health care reform be more walk than talk? As many of the speakers themselves conceded, they have participated in similar health care campaigns over the past decades that went nowhere. Wisconsin's most recent effort to pass a universal health care plan at the state level, Healthy Wisconsin, fizzled just last fall.

David Riemer, director of policy and planning for Community Advocates in Milwaukee, reminisced about participating in similar reform efforts 25 years ago. "Most of those lawmakers have retired by now," he said. "It feels a little bit like Groundhog Day to be back here again."

This time around, though, Riemer and the other advocates agreed, they may actually have a shot at winning revolutionary change. Not only does the national campaign have more money and more diverse participants working together than ever before, but the public is more desperate. Several advocates said that they are also pinning their hopes on Barack Obama's push for the White House.

"We're getting toward the perfect storm. It's a new era in political leadership," Riemer said.

Kraig agreed. "We're going to make history," he said.

Shawn Doherty  —  7/08/2008 5:12 pm