All in the service of enacting tax-subsidized mandatory purchase of for-profit health insurance.

Will the House go along? Will healthcare reform pass if they don’t?

There are many ways to stop this health insurance reform bill by fighting over abortion, immigrants, the excise tax or the public option, but apparently only one way to pass it—bow to the pro-corporate Democratic “moderates” and count on progressives to fold.

So it will likely pass.

And then the fight begins.

We have learned through the historic alliance between the California Nurses Association—now part of the largest registered nurses union in the country, National Nurses United—and Progressive Democrats of America that each time the end is declared, we open a new path for struggle.

Like when the Democratic National Committee wouldn’t take a stand for guaranteed healthcare with everybody in, nobody out. But PDA and CNA organized, and the language was inserted in the Democratic platform. And again, when the state option for single-payer couldn’t pass the committee, or was stripped from the House bill. But thanks to the grassroots outrage at the House leadership betrayal, the fight moved to the Senate where Bernie Sanders is still fighting for it.

Or when conventional wisdom said Eric Massa couldn’t win running on single payer in a GOP district. But he did. And then he was one of two principled progressive votes against the compromised House bill.

Yes, we need to steel ourselves if we cannot defeat this insurance industry bailout bill. Progressives who want single payer but believed that the public option was politically viable may learn a hard lesson: We need to win the debate on Medicare for All, not try to avoid it.

Thanks to the hard work of activists in every corner of the US, PDA and CNA have been fighting to do just that.

We’re doing a sustained campaign against the corrupt corporate power that strangles democratic progress in the Senate, reduces change to the lowest common denominator, and blames government for the failings of the for-profit system.

Hope isn’t about a candidate or a piece of legislation. We build hope through action—walking inside the halls of Congress and agitating outside.

Carry on!

Michael Lighty
Director of Public Policy, CNA/NNU

Written by :

Andrea Miller