If you live in Maryland's 1st Congressional District (basically the Eastern Shore, Harford County, extreme northeastern Baltimore County, and an area around Annapolis), you need to contact your Congressman and get him to understand how important PROMPT action on health care reform is, and how much we need a public option included in the plan. This was a district that, until the last election, was represented by moderate Republican and generally very good guy Wayne Gilchrist, a former high school government and history teacher who, while a Republican, generally voted the way most of us see things on close votes, including those requiring courage that an unfortunate number of Democrats were unwilling to demonstrate.
Gilchrist could have been re-elected in general elections basically as long as he wanted to stay in Congress, but he was HATED by the right-wingers, had been targeted in several consecutive primaries by the so-called Club for Growth, and was finally defeated in the 2008 primary by a real wing-nut.
Frank Kratovil was the Democratic nominee, and with a lot of support from the netroots, he won the seat. Today, Representative Kratovil had an op-ed piece in the Baltimore Sun entitled Do health reform right instead of doing it quickly, which seems to me to be basically a call for a go-slow approach on health care reform. He begins by endorsing President Obama's overall position on health care reform, but then there's this:
The challenges facing lawmakers on all three of these fronts - coverage, cost and rural access - are considerable. After decades of debate, we now have what may be a short window to finally make progress by passing health care reform legislation that will put our nation back on a path toward fiscal stability and middle class prosperity. That means that Congress has a responsibility both to this generation and future generations to get it right.
That is why recent comments from Doug Elmendorf, director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), were so concerning. Mr. Elmendorf testified before a Senate panel that the legislation pending before the House would not adequately address the cost crisis, and would actually worsen our federal government's long-term fiscal outlook. While I agree with President Obama that skyrocketing costs and a lack of coverage signal a need to reform health care in our country, the CBO's findings cast legitimate doubts as to whether the legislation before the House will accomplish these shared goals.
At the very least, these questions about this bill's long-term fiscal implications should highlight the need to be deliberative and thorough in reviewing this health care reform legislation. We should not rush any plan through Congress that has not been properly vetted. The bill must be tweaked until neutral budget analysts confirm that it will sufficiently bend the cost curve to improve our fiscal outlook.
He concludes his op-ed piece with the following:
I have urged both the White House and Democratic congressional leaders to make sure we have enough time to thoroughly review any proposal before a vote. I believe that anything worth doing is worth doing right, and I will not support any legislative proposal until its full consequences for cost, coverage and rural access have been thoroughly examined.
Well, Representative Kratovil, I agree that we need to "bend the cost curve," but there's one way we KNOW we won't do that, and that's by doing nothing. It seems to me that the proper choice isn't to refuse to do anything until we have a proposal that we're sure "bends the cost curve," and thereby leave numerous Americans who want health insurance without the ability to get it, and also thereby to assure that the "cost curve" remains the same. It seems to me that it's worth enacting health care reform that assures that the millions of Americans (including many residents of Rep. Kratovil's district) who can't presently get health insurance at all (or at least at a remotely affordable price) can be sure that they won't have to declare bankruptcy because they get sick, and that appears reasonably likely not to WORSEN the "cost curve." Then, after we have accomplished that, we can amend the legislation to change the direction of the "cost curve."
Why any member of Congress would appear to think that legislation, once enacted, is somehow engraved in stone is frankly beyond me. If the Democrats in Roosevelt's first Congress had acted like congressional Democrats are acting now, the New Deal probably wouldn't have begun until Roosevelt's second or third term -- except that he wouldn't have gotten a second or third term if Congress had insisted on doing nothing until they were POSITIVE that they were doing the right thing.
Somebody wiser than me once observed that doing nothing is in fact doing SOMETHING -- it's an affirmative decision to continue with the status quo until a decision is made and implemented to do something different. The status quo may not seem that bad to Representative Kratovil and many other members of Congress, because THEY'VE got health insurance. But it seems pretty bad to the millions of Americans who, alone among citizens of the western democracies, need to worry about going bankrupt if they or a member of their family gets sick.
I don't think Frank Kratovil is a bad guy. In fact, based on his history, I think he's got the right instincts. But he's a new Congressman, narrowly elected, from what is a Republican-leaning district. I think that basically, he's worried about the electoral consequences of appearing to be too bold on this issue. But his predecessor stood up to the right wing on tough vote after tough vote, including on such hot-button issues as flag burning, and he would never have lost in a general election. Democrats in the First District who think going slow is the wrong approach need to let Rep. Kratovil know that they don't expect timidity from him on this issue, and that they'll have his back if he does the right thing.
Here is a link to the contact information for Rep. Kratovil:
http://kratovil.house.gov/...