Rep. Eric Massa is Right – No Real Public Option = A No Vote

As the staged theater continues at town hall events, with out of district, often paid “protesters” showing up to disrupt meetings, insurance executives essentially ordering their employees out to meetings to “create opposition,” and now an escalation of rhetoric leading to death threats in some instances, elected representatives are under siege by Special Interest Stagecraft.

Lost in all this, of course, are ordinary consumers who live in the district, who are too often being drowned out by the rabble at many of these events.

Now we have more noise in the mix coming from groups on the left that want to fritter away true health care reform just for the sake of getting anything passed.  Some of them are upset that Rep. Massa has stood firm in his conviction that a health care reform bill that jettisons a “public option” isn’t health care reform at all — it’s just a watered down insurance reform bill that will evoke heaving sighs of relief from the insurance and big pharmaceutical lobbies.

Citizens Action New York (who?) showed up Tuesday at Rep. Massa’s Pittsford office with 5,000 signed petitions from “New Yorkers” (how many are inside the 29th Congressional District is an open question) who want health care reform, apparently even if it means passing a bill that has a title page by the name, with little to no reform in the actual bill.

Meanwhile, Local 1170 of Communications Workers of America and the Working Families Party also turned up begging Massa for a vote that constitutes appeasement with the health care industry.

While the teabagging rabble attempts to shout down people at town hall meetings, some of the “watered down health care” crowd is manning out-of-district phone banks, actually encouraging people to tell Congress to vote for whatever scraps that eventually result from compromising away the core principles of health care reform.

I’ve fought legislative battles on telecommunications law for more than 20 years now.  The one true fact of life I’ve learned repeatedly in my own battles, a lesson I wish my Democratic lobbying friends would finally learn, is that it is worse to pass a bill that doesn’t solve the problem than killing the bill and starting all over again from scratch.

A health care reform bill, at the bare minimum, must contain a true public option.  There is a reason why the other side is quiet about “co-ops,” because they know that’s not true reform — it’s window dressing.

For once, can the Democratic Party not be the ONLY group that actually believes Republican talking points?  Progressives have already compromised away the single-payer health care system concept and are forced to live with “the public option.”  The other side, who wants to keep the status quo, has compromised not a single one of their core principles away, yet now there are Democrats who are back before progressives once again asking them for more compromises, while the other side merrily pounds away on one of the most important reform issues of the last 50 years.

Enough.

Citizens Action New York and the CWA, among others, want Congressman Massa to throw away his core values and beliefs and support what looks more and more like a health care lobby’s dream come true – a bill that hands them tens of millions of new customers forced to pay into a system modified with lukewarm reform that I assure you will be chipped away through exploitation of loopholes that always exist in these bills.

But it’s worse.  The passage of such frittered away legislation will kill momentum for real, honest reform for at least two decades.

“Didn’t we already address this issue in the Health Care Reform Act just x years ago? Why do we need to make changes – we should wait and allow the legislation’s impact to be fully measured in a few years.”

I’ve heard exactly the same kind of language on the telecommunications issues I’ve fought for in the past.

It is always better to realize that if you’ve been outmaneuvered or have been stabbed in the back by the “colleagues” in your own party that traded away their souls for fat campaign contributions, it’s much better to kill a bad bill and begin anew than to pass bad legislation that changes little or nothing.

Congressman Massa recognizes that reality.

The correct response to all of this is for the president and leaders in Congress to start cracking the whip, and for once get the wavering Democrats on board and unified… or else.

For the rest of us, we’re remembering the names of those who stood with consumers and will be there to support them come election time.  Congressman Massa is one of those.  Those that decided to throw their constituents under the bus so they could keep those nice big campaign contributions will also need our help – to force a primary challenge, raise money for the opponent, and get those people out of office.

Citizens Action New York, CWA, and others — stop being part of the problem and start getting into the hand to hand combat we need right now to force through legislation that has a public option.  Doing anything less is like doing nothing for the people you claim to represent.