The insurance industry has no political base
Not long after the election, Organizing for America called its first meeting. Voters who supported Obama's campaign were asked to meet in small groups across the country and discuss our top issues. We were told this would influence the priorities of the new administration.
I took it as an encouraging sign that Obama intends to carry his community-organizing style of campaigning into the White House. The essence of every community organizing campaign is getting people in a community talking with each other, finding out what issues they care about most, and helping them take action to accomplish those goals. Outdated pundits on the left and right are slow to understand the significance of a new politics based on empowering the public to work against entrenched special interests.
I attended two of the organizing meetings in Springfield. Both groups picked the same two top issues: global warming/energy and health care. I suspect results were similar across the country and those are the top two issues Obama has prioritized since becoming President.
When we talked about health care, the meeting I hosted quickly agreed that we should have a single-payer system or some other non-profit insurance system that takes the profit motive out of health care decision making. We reached quick consensus with little discussion. Everyone agreed as though it was an easy no-brainer. I believe this is typical among Obama's base who volunteered to get him elected.
Obama's base doesn't debate whether there should be a "public option" like the corporate-owned press and Congress do. They debate whether the for-profit insurance industry should exist at all and whether stock holders should be allowed to enrich themselves at the expense of those who need health care.
The base vote was alienated when the debate opened with the question of whether health care reform should include a public option. No one is going to call their Congressman in support of a plan to prop up the insurance industry. Americans increasingly see the insurance industry as the fundamental problem, and not part of the solution.
One of the few times I was disappointed in Obama during the campaign was when he dodged a question during the debates about the problems of having a health care system based on a for-profit insurance industry. He needs to stop dodging the question if health care reform is going to pass.
Obama will succeed at rallying his base as long as the focus is on creating an alternative to the fundamentally broken system of for-profit health insurance rather than simply pushing a compromise with the insurance industry. I don't think he has to propose a single-payer system now, but he needs to show that the reform he's pushing for will move us toward a system with a public option combined with non-profit insurance co-ops. Other countries have proven it works.
It's not surprising that Republicans and their insurance industry allies turn to deception. What little I've seen looks no different than their 1993 scare tactics. But today too many people have noticed that Republican horror stories about waiting lists and health decisions made by bureaucrats is already the reality with their current HMO.
Squeamish Democrats in Congress need to remember what happened in 1994 after a Democratic Congress failed to pass universal health care. It was the lowest turnout election in modern history.
The insurance industry can run scary adds but they can't motivate Democratic voters to show up on election day for a Congress that's too cowardly to deliver on a progressive mandate.