Dr. Errington Thompson

Do you remember Morris Day, the lead singer of one of the ultimate party groups, The Time? From the darkness, Morris Day would shout, “What Time Is It?” The music would start blaring and the party was on. It is time for health care reform. It is time for us to have a universal program that covers everybody. We are currently spending 16 percent of our gross domestic product on health care. Personally, I think spending $2.3 trillion on health care is plenty of money. We should not have to spend any more to get everything that we want.

We want access to quality primary care providers. We want these primary care providers to give us better outcomes—a better quality of life and a longer life. We want to be able to go to the drugstore to pick up our prescriptions without having to leave our first born as collateral. If we have an emergency — if we are in a car crash or fall off a roof; if we have a heart attack — we want to be able to be taken to a quality medical center where we can be treated with compassion and dignity and with the latest medical techniques. Why can’t we make this happen?

Last month we had the rare opportunity to see Republicans and Democrats sit down and discuss a single issue. For over seven hours, we got to see our political leaders argue over health care. Yes, there was some political posturing on both sides, but one thing should be clear to all Americans: the Democrats have a plan and a passion for health care reform; Republicans have no plan, but they definitely have passion for stopping health care reform.

From Republican Minority Whip Eric Cantor to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, not one Republican put together a thoughtful argument that would control the escalating health care costs and cover the 45 million people who live in the United States without health insurance, or offered a plan that can be taken from Maine to Florida to California.

Democrats, for all of our passion, where is our spine? The Dems cannot stand up for health care reform. Democrats are causing me to reach for my Pepto-Bismol. People who follow politics, as I do, have seen for over a year that it is going to be nearly impossible to get 60 votes in the Senate to stop debate on health care reform. Therefore, the Senate would need to go to reconciliation to pass health care reform.

I talked about this on my radio show back in February of 2009. This summer, Senator Jay Rockefeller made an impassioned speech for the public option. He said it was morally right. It was only a couple weeks ago he said that he did not believe that we should use reconciliation to get health care reform passed. What? Didn’t he say it was morally right? Senator Rockefeller was 100 percent correct when he said this was a moral issue. We need to get health care reform passed.

I would urge you not to fall for the same old clichés about our government. Government can do this right. We have to get this right. This is as important as landing on Normandy beaches on D-Day. If we want to have money for defense, homeland security, bridges and roads, education, and green energy we have to control costs of health care now. Economists have estimated that health care will eat up 25 percent of our gross national product in 20 years if we don’t do something.

Finally, I’ve been listening to talking heads on the Internet telling me that Democrats, liberals, and progressives are not energized. Someone even suggested that we are depressed. Depressed? From what? I’m not sure who thought electing Barack Obama would be a panacea. I do know that I’ve talked about the need for progressives to push harder with a Democratic Congress.

We’ve seen Democrats in the past waver and succumb to the whims of Republicans. We knew this would happen. Deep in our hearts, we knew this was going to be a huge undertaking. Just look at what we’re trying to accomplish — reversing 30 years of Republican rule and ideology (Clinton was the only bright spot). We are trying to reverse 30 years of giveaways to major corporations. We’re trying to put the American citizen ahead of big business. Even Democrats have bought into the ideology that the markets could fix everything — an idea that’s been pushed by the Republicans for decades.

We have a lot of work to do. President Barack Obama has told us that this is not going to be easy. So, it is time for us to be fired up. Once we get health care reform passed, we still have more work to do: create a green economy, create millions of green jobs, fix the Patriot Act, and concentrate on lasting financial reform that will work for all Americans. We need to write and call our legislators. We need for them to support health care reform. It is time to get busy.