Based on the abysmal strategy of Democratic candidates to undermine their chances of winning during this year’s midterm elections, it became abundantly clear that, in politics, either you define who you are to your voters or you face the detriment of having your opponent do the job for you.
The midterms are over but the battle to define Democrats continues, and at risk are the eradication of hard-fought legislation, such as the Affordable Care Act, and the losing of the 2016 presidential contest.
With the conservatively dominated United States Supreme Court poised to conduct yet another examination of the ACA, the stakes could not be higher. For this reason, the recent statements of New York Senator Charles Schumer, regarding the ACA, must be pushedback and challenged at every opportunity.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) made waves during his speech at the National Press Club in Washington DC this week, when he expressed that passing health care reform had been the wrong move for Democrats because it did not help middle-class Americans.
The claim that the ACA has not helped middle-class Americans is false, for as Think Progress recently pointed out:
Middle-income Americans benefitted from tax credits and health care subsidies. The[y] also benefited from parts of the law that secured insurance for people with pre-existing conditions, and allowed young people to stay on their parents insurance until the age of 26.
Perhaps the most significant way in which Obamacare has helped middle-class Americans is the effect that it has had on the cost of health insurance. In New York — Schumer’s home state — the previously unchecked rise in premiums has been slowing overall ever since the law was enacted, with many people actually enjoying a significant drop in price.
Beyond these facts, Schumer’s seeming insensitivity toward the poor indicts any effort on his part to appear to be a Progressive or a Populist. You cannot be a Populist by arguing for the delay of healthcare that will benefit everyday people.
Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy, former “Lion of the Senate”, knew this quite well, as he explained through the pages of Newsweek in July of 2009, not long before his passing.
Kennedy:
Newsweek-2009
This is the cause of my life. It is a key reason that I defied my illness last summer to speak at the Democratic convention in Denver—to support Barack Obama, but also to make sure, as I said, "that we will break the old gridlock and guarantee that every American…will have decent, quality health care as a fundamental right and not just a privilege.
For four decades I have carried this cause—from the floor of the United States Senate to every part of this country. It has never been merely a question of policy; it goes to the heart of my belief in a just society.
Schumer:
After passing the stimulus, Democrats should have continued to propose middle-class-oriented programs and built on the partial success of the stimulus, but unfortunately Democrats blew the opportunity the American people gave them.… We took their mandate and put all of our focus on the wrong problem—health care reform.
Kennedy:
Newsweek-2009
I have seen letters and e-mails from many of these less fortunate Americans. In their pleas, there's always dignity, but too often desperation. ‘Our school is closing in June of 2010, which means that I will be losing my job and my health insurance,’ writes Mary Dunn, a 58-year-old schoolteacher in Eden, S.D. ‘I am a Type I diabetic, and I had heart bypass surgery in 2005. My husband is also a teacher [here], so we will both be losing insurance.
I am exploring options and have been told that I cannot stay on our group policy or transfer to another policy after our jobs cease because of my medical condition. What am I to do after 39 years of teaching to acquire adequate health coverage?’
Schumer:
When Democrats focused on health care, the average middle-class person thought, 'The Democrats aren't paying enough attention to me.'
Kennedy:
Newsweek - 2009
I've heard countless such stories, including one from the family of Cassandra Wilson, a 14-year-old who once was a competitive ice skater. She's uninsured because she has petit mal seizures, often 200 times a day. Her parents have run up $30,000 on their credit cards.
They've sold her skating equipment on eBay to pay for her care. These two cases represent only those patients who lack coverage. We also need to find answers for the increasing number of Americans whose insurance costs too much, covers too little, and can be too easily revoked when they face the most serious illnesses.
Schumer:
People thought—and I understand this—lots of people thought this was the only time to do this, it's very important to do. And we should have done it. We just shouldn't have done it first…We were in the middle of a recession. People were hurting and saying, 'What about me? I'm losing my job. It's not health care that bothers me. What about me?’
The struggle for national healthcare has always been a Progressive goal and this long sought after achievement has always been an elusive one, most notably since the “Bull Moose” presidential campaign of Theodore Roosevelt in 1912.
And in stark opposition to Schumer’s claim that healthcare reform should not have been pursued during the the Great Recession, Franklin Delano Roosevelt sought to institute national healthcare during the teeth of the Great Depression:
In 1932 Franklin Roosevelt (D) won the presidency, and the following year his administration began an aggressive program of economic and social intervention known as the “New Deal.” Many liberal Democrats expected some form of national health insurance to be a part of this program.
Indeed, in 1933 Roosevelt’s Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) declared healthcare to be a fundamental human right. But resistance to government intervention in medicine continued to be strong among doctors and hospitals. The Roosevelt administration initially planned to include national health insurance in the Social Security Act, but fierce AMA resistance persuaded Roosevelt to remove it.
And, despite midterm losses in 1946, which resulted in Republicans gaining majorities in both the House and Senate, Harry Truman, in his State of the Union Address of 1948,
called for the passage of a national healthcare law.
We are rightly proud of the high standards of medical care we know how to provide in the United States. The fact is, however, that most of our people cannot afford to pay for the care they need.
I have often and strongly urged that this condition demands a national health program. The heart of the program must be a national system of payment for medical care based on well-tried insurance principles. This great Nation cannot afford to allow its citizens to suffer needlessly from the lack of proper medical care.
Following Truman’s noteworthy attempt, the cause of national healthcare was once again taken up forcefully by John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, who after passing Medicare and Medicaid into law, as part of the Social Security Act of 1935,
called still for a national healthcare plan:
I will also propose the International Health Act of 1966 to strike at disease by a new effort to bring modern skills and knowledge to the uncared-for.
Kennedy:
Newsweek-2009
In the Senate, I viewed Medicare as a great achievement, but only a beginning. In 1966, I visited the Columbia Point Neighborhood Health Center in Boston; it was a pilot project providing health services to low-income families in the two-floor office of an apartment building. I saw mothers in rocking chairs, tending their children in a warm and welcoming setting.
They told me this was the first time they could get basic care without spending hours on public transportation and in hospital waiting rooms. I authored legislation, which passed a few months later, establishing the network of community health centers that are all around America today.
Kennedy would go on to introduce legislation for universal coverage in 1970.
Kennedy:
Newsweek-2009
Some years later, I decided the time was right to renew the quest for universal and affordable coverage. When I first introduced the bill in 1970, I didn't expect an easy victory (although I never suspected that it would take this long). I eventually came to believe that we'd have to give up on the ideal of a government-run, single-payer system if we wanted to get universal care.
Some of my allies called me a sellout because I was willing to compromise. Even so, we almost had a plan that President Richard Nixon was willing to sign in 1974—but that chance was lost as the Watergate storm swept Washington and the country, and swept Nixon out of the White House. I tried to negotiate an agreement with President Carter but became frustrated when he decided that he'd rather take a piecemeal approach. I ran against Carter, a sitting president from my own party, in large part because of this disagreement.
Schumer:
About 85 percent of all Americans were fine with their health care in 2009, mainly because it was paid for by either the government or their employer, private sector. So they weren't clamoring. The average middle-class voter, they weren't opposed to doing health care when it started out, but it wasn't at the top of the agenda.
Kennedy:
Newsweek-2009
When President Clinton proposed his plan, 33 million Americans had no health insurance. Today the official number has reached 47 million, but the economic crisis will certainly push the total higher. Unless we act now, within a few years, 55 million Americans could be left without coverage even as the economy recovers.
All Americans should be required to have insurance. For those who can't afford the premiums, we can provide subsidies. We'll make it illegal to deny coverage due to preexisting conditions. We'll also prohibit the practice of charging women higher premiums than men, and the elderly far higher premiums than anyone else. The bill drafted by the Senate health committee will let children be covered by their parents' policy until the age of 26, since first jobs after high school or college often don't offer health benefits.
As per the National Journal:
Schumer blamed the push for the Affordable Care Act so early in Obama's first term for the rise of the tea-party movement, which destroyed the Democratic majority in the House in 2010 and went on to—long with a number of other missteps by the federal government, including implementation of the law—oust the Democratic majority in the Senate as well in 2014.
How grating it is to see Democrats providing rational for Republicans, or their subgroups, when in fact, in many instances, they are lacking in rational and if they promote a rational such motivations are usually not based in reality, as
Forbes pointed out in an article in 2010, based on the Tea Party promoted premise of burdensome taxation as a reason for their anger at President Obama, in contradiction to Schumer's pronouncements:
In short, no matter how one slices the data, the Tea Party crowd appears to believe that federal taxes are very considerably higher than they actually are, whether referring to total taxes as a share of GDP or in terms of the taxes paid by a typical family.
Tea Partyers also seem to have a very distorted view of the direction of federal taxes. They were asked whether they are higher, lower or the same as when Barack Obama was inaugurated last year. More than two-thirds thought that taxes are higher today, and only 4% thought they were lower; the rest said they are the same.
As noted earlier, federal taxes are very considerably lower by every measure since Obama became president. And given the economic circumstances, it’s hard to imagine that a tax increase would have been enacted last year. In fact, 40% of Obama’s stimulus package involved tax cuts. These include the Making Work Pay Credit, which reduces federal taxes for all taxpayers with incomes below $75,000 by between $400 and $800.
Still, as it relates to the Affordable Care Act, in 2009 Senator Kennedy was gratified that his long sought after goal of achieving national healthcare was imminent.
Kennedy:
Newsweek-2009
We will bring health-care reform to the Senate and House floors soon, and there will be a vote. A century-long struggle will reach its climax. We're almost there. In the meantime, I will continue what I've been doing—making calls, urging progress. I've had dinner twice recently at my home in Hyannis Port with Senator Dodd, and when President Obama called me during his Rome trip after meeting with the Pope, much of our discussion was about health care.
I believe the bill will pass, and we will end the disgrace of America as the only major industrialized nation in the world that doesn't guarantee health care for all of its people.
One has to wonder about the motivations of an influential member of the Democratic Party who appears to be joining with Republicans and many in the media to minimize the importance of the Affordable Care Act.
Despite the difficulties George W. Bush’s Medicare Part D experienced upon passing, I have yet to see a major Republican leader step forward and introduce the notion into the national dialogue that the program was “wrong”.
Are we to believe that the learned Senator, who has represented the media capital of the world for more than a decade, is really so unsophisticated in terms of the impact of his word choices?
Whatever his motivations for referring to the passing of the healthcare legislation as “wrong”, it is absolutely certain that if Democrats allow this negative messaging from party leaders to continue to guide our narrative, what we saw during the midterms of 2014 will have been just the beginning of a massively shifting iceberg.