This is for my fellow activists, for my brothers and sisters in the fight for equitable healthcare. It’s for everyone who is disappointed with compromise and frustrated with the slow creak of progress. It’s for Nick Skala, who isn’t here to advise us on what to do and where to go, and it’s for Quentin Young, who is.
The bill that passed is not the one we wanted. It’s not the one we hoped for and worked for and fought for. It is piecemeal, not systematic; it is incomplete. It might seem we’ve settled, but I believe that we have won.
What we won this week was not legislative, but moral. Indeed, the one hundred year struggle, from Teddy Roosevelt to Teddy Kennedy, has not been legislative. It has been moral. We had had no consensus in this country on the idea of providing healthcare to all Americans. We had made no decision on healthcare as a human right. Not the immortal words of Martin Luther King, nor the haunting stories of America’s families, had been enough to end that debate.
Roosevelt, Truman, Johnson, and Clinton all fought an opponent that did not believe that every American had a right to seek treatment for his illnesses. They fought an opponent that did not agree that when we’re sick, we ought to have a chance to see a doctor, no matter whether we’re rich or not, lucky or not, strong or not.
But in the last two years, I have seen the words change. Republicans have been saying–and I’ll take them at their word–that we need to help Americans get care. And the insurance companies have been saying–and I’ll take them at their word, too–that Americans should be able to see the doctor. And the AMA is saying it, too. Everyone’s saying it. Maybe nobody’s doing the right thing about it, not even the Democrats, but everybody’s saying it.
And yet there is an undercurrent, a murmur below the surface, that is saying something quite different. That is saying that maybe it isn’t worth it to make sure the needy can go see the doctor. Maybe their health is too expensive and too troublesome, not important enough to the health of this country. We know that that undercurrent, that murmur, we know that it’s wrong. And we know that it’s dangerous.
For now, it is quiet. The winds of public opinion are in our favor: All people deserve treatment when they’re sick.
So in thinking about legislation, all that was left to debate was how to do it. Many of us believed it was single payer. I still think we’re right. But when my friends get angry over the passage of a bill that they think might weaken our economy, that they think might help insurance companies, that they think might squeeze the middle class, I want them to imagine the alternative.
Imagine that this bill had not passed. Maybe it would have just been a chance to do what the Republicans said–”start over”–and find another way to get to this thing that we all agree on in spirit. One thing’s for sure, we wouldn’t have been starting at single payer. But what I think is more likely is that we would have emboldened that bubbling undercurrent, given power to that disquieting murmur. After all this, that fundamental consensus that we all deserve healthcare–we could have lost it.
By passing this bill, by having the President of the United States sign it into law, we solidify a principle. We set a precedent that every one of us should have a doctor to see. That every one of us should have a place to go when we’re sick. That every one of us deserves compassion and care and the triumphs of medicine. That every one of us is a person, with a life and with struggles and with dignity.
Now I know this bill doesn’t get us there. But it vindicates the belief.
This is a new day of justice, not for what we have earned, but for what we have promised. We have promised ourselves and our children and our children’s children that healthcare is for them, for all of them. We have begun with the premise of righteousness and shown that it can win.
If we had not won this modest victory, if we had not passed this modest bill, we would still be in the quagmire of moral relativism. But we’re done with that. The moral victory is ours. We finally agree on common decency. Now it’s our job to get us to common sense.
