Why we can't wait ... for health care reform

Like many Americans, I've grown tired of the seemingly endless debate over health care reform that has consumed official Washington for the past year. But unlike the critics who want to kill reform, I don't think we should give up on a year's worth of work and return to the drawing board.

The final health care bill will not be perfect. Nothing created by humans (even the Ipod) ever is. But it will move America one giant step toward two important goals: helping millions of Americans in need and curing the sin of selfishness that has gripped our country the past 30 years.

First, let's talk about those in need.

As the House of Representatives stands poised to pass the Senate health care bill, opponents have resurrected decades-old arguments about costs, socialism and even abortion to try to derail a piece of legislation that simply tries to provide health care coverage to 31 million people who are uninsured. These arguments underscore the desperate efforts being made and the millions of dollars being spent to undermine any kind of significant reform of our health care system.

The Senate bill, if passed by the House on Sunday, would help align America with the community of civilized industrial nations that already provide health care to their people. Among other things, the legislation would force insurance companies to cover Americans with pre-existing conditions and prevent them from dropping people who become sick. That's just the right thing to do.

Some complain that we can't afford health care reform. Actually, we can't afford not to do it. The new law will help control rising medical costs that are bankrupting businesses and families, and it will, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, reduce the federal deficit by $130 billion over the next decade. 

Republicans complained that the health care bill would add to the deficit, but the CBO said this week that it won't. Then they complained that the CBO couldn't be trusted because it didn't cook the books to support their complaints. Coming from a party that doubled the federal debt and gave away trillions of dollars to defense contractors and the wealthy over the past decade, arguments about fiscal restraint don't add up.

Second, let's talk about selfishness.

For three decades, Republican leaders have tried, with considerable success, to convince Americans that greed is good. If businesses do well, the argument goes, the rest of us will do well. But as businesses have prospered over the past 30 years, real family income has remained stagnant. Tax rates for the wealthy have been cut in half since Ronald Reagan became president, but middle-class Americans have emerged from this era of greed with credit card bills they can't pay, homes they can't afford and 401Ks that aren't appreciating as quickly as they hoped.

Despite their failures, conservatives managed to convince many ordinary Americans that helping out their neighbors in need was somehow un-American. Giving tax breaks to corporations and the super wealthy was good because it would stimulate the economy and create jobs, they said. But giving any kind of assistance to ordinary people was bad policy that would encourage a sense of dependency on what they pejoratively labeled "welfare."

That's why conservatives are fighting so hard to kill health care reform. If the bill works, Republicans who may experience short-term gains at the polls this year by stoking the fears of an angry electorate will soon see the limits of their myopic electoral strategy. Tens of millions of Americans will eventually enjoy the benefits of health care and they won't understand those old arguments about "socialized medicine." Health care will be perceived as a "right" for the many and not simply a privilege for the wealthy few.

Hence, the irony of watching a political party that has spent the past 30 years trying to eliminate Medicare now citing the Democrats' proposed cuts in Medicare spending as an argument against the bill. The survival of the very same senior entitlement program the GOP derisively labeled as socialism for the past 40 years is now the linchpin of the Republican strategy to kill health care reform for the rest of us.

I haven't always agreed with President Obama's bipartisan strategy for moving on health care reform, and I don't think the new bill is the final answer to our problems. But it is a giant leap forward in implementing the most important domestic priority for the Democratic Party in the past 40 years.

Process issues aside, President Obama is right about one thing. After a year of relentless and sometimes ridiculous debate, the time for talk is over. Now it's time to stand and be counted. Americans deserve health care now.