The First Part of the Dream Comes True - Richard Kirsch, Health Care for America Now
07/06/08 | Comment (38)
by Richard Kirsch, Health Care for America Now Campaign Director
About a year and a half ago I asked some of the folks I work with whether it was time to start a new campaign for national health care. Well tomorrow – on July 8th – that campaign is about to launch with a roar. In 52 cities around the country, including state capitals in 38 states, people will be standing up to declare that it’s time once and for all to guarantee good, affordable health care to everyone in our country.
We’ll have a DC launch too, with the heads of some of the biggest unions, community groups, women’s organizations, netroots and progressive think tanks joining to together to send this rocket aloft. And we’ll have a fun but pointed national TV and print ad buy that lays it out simply: you can’t trust the health insurance industry to fix the health care mess. Plus, more than 5 million people will get our first email blast.
But the heart and soul of this campaign will be outside the Beltway, where the high cost and endless hassle of trying to get past the health insurance companies to the health care we need is driving people nuts. And now driving us to do something about it.
The first part of my dream was putting together a huge, national grassroots campaign that brought together the biggest forces with progressive values in the nation, to fight together for a guarantee of affordable, quality health care for all. We’re on our way. The real dream is actually adding a guarantee of health care to the American Dream.
You know, no matter how hard we work now and how responsible we may be, we still don’t have health care we can count on. We’re all paying more and getting less, while the health insurance companies are making out like bandits. Every time we get an envelope from the health insurance company we wonder how much of the bill we’ll get stuck with. And every time a business turns around, their health insurance premiums just went up enough to make them wonder whether they can still afford to keep covering their employees’ health care. Meanwhile – as we point out in the print ads that we’re running this week in the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal – health insurance company profits went up more than 1,000% in five years.
The insurance companies and their political allies will do everything they can to hold onto the profits they make by denying people care and shifting costs to families and businesses. Which is why we are drawing a sharp and deep line in the sand this year, in 2008, to get ready for winning health care in 2009. We’re asking America, Which side are you on? The side of quality affordable health care for all? Or the side of leaving us on our own to buy health insurance? That is the stark choice facing the nation. Two very different approaches to the health care mess. Which side are you on?
I’ve spend my whole work life outside of the Beltway and I know that the only way we can win a guarantee of quality affordable health care is if all us work our butts off to take on the powerful interests that have Congress and the whole political establishment in a choke-hold. That starts with each of us. So if you share our dream of good affordable health care for all, you can start by taking action now. First step is to tell us Which side are you on? If you’ve already done that, then tell a friend, or better yet 10 friends. And if you belong to an organization, get that group to join the campaign.
One last thing, as we begin this campaign. I promise we will have fun. In fact there’s nothing more fun in life than taking down powerful interests and showing them that in the end, the people do rule. Join the party.
