Let's get it done! rally for health care: a report

800 people came together to raise their voices for a common goal: Gimme my public option! Oh yea, and the rest of the health care stuff as well.

The "Let's get it done!" rally hosted by Organizing for America and Health Care for America Now! was MC'd by Attorney General John Kroger and featured former health insurance industry flak turned whistleblower Wendell Potter as keynote speaker. Guest speakers Chuck Curry and Tom Chamberlain both raised huge roars as they called on the nation and the Congress to deal properly with what Curry called "the moral issue of our day".

But nothing brought more loud, sustained cheering and applause from the crowd gathered at Terry Shrunk Plaza than when any of the speakers calling for a public option. As Potter said to me after the rally, "Having worked in the industry 20 years, I know how resourceful the companies are to flout regulations, to figure out ways to make money." The public option is the #1 tool available in this effort to at last undermine the power of the insurance companies and bring costs under control. And almost everyone at the rally understood that.

The rally began appropriately, with Kroger speaking of Kennedy — "I think it's safe to say that Senator Ted Kennedy was a complicated man from a complicated family. But it is also fair to say that no one fought harder over the length of his career for working families than Sen Kennedy." And then, without drawing the overt comparison, he noted what he'd seen on right-wing tv:

Everything was, "America can't do this," "American can't do that," "America can't afford the other thing". And it just seemed amazing to me because America's always been a country that prides itself on its courage, on its pragmatism, on its ability to solve problems, on its ability to draw together and make sure that we push the country forward in the directions we need to go.

Prior to the rally, I had a chance to ask Kroger about the need for more involvement from those who had supported him and Obama last year.

We have to get away from activism in elections that immediately fizzles afterwards. Trying to get real change in the country is extraordinarily difficult; there's a lot of very powerful interests who want to block any change whatsoever. The only way we're going to make any progress is if we transform our politics, and that's going to mean a lot more citizen involvement and a lot more grassroots activism.

Linda Bergen of SEIU spoke first, however, of what supporters expect from Congress:

We expect Congressional representatives to keep the provisions in the bill [HR 3200 and Senate HELP bill] strong and vote "Yes" for a strong bill on the House floor. Support quality, affordable health care for everyone and take a stand against the private insurance companies, their lobbyists and their disruptive mobs.

The rally's keynote speaker, Wendell Potter, shared his insider's knowledge of the private insurance companies and how they used more than disruptive mobs to undermine reform. But first, he apologized for his role in defeating reform in 1993:

I'd to begin by apologizing to all of you for the role I played 15 years ago in cheating you out of a reformed health care system. Had it not been for greedy insurance companies and other special interests, their army of lobbyists and spin doctors like I used to be, we wouldn't be here today. I'm ashamed I let myself get caught up in deceitful and dishonest PR campaigns that worked so well that hundreds of thousands of our citizens have died and millions of others have lost their homes and been forced into bankruptcy so that a very few corporate executives and their Wall Street masters could become obscenely rich.

Potter spoke of how the insurances pretend to agree to cooperate with government to provide the information and care consumers need, yet they have no intention of ever following through with agreements to to be good citizens. The goal of the insurance industry is to twist reform efforts to benefit its "Wall Street masters" more than ordinary Americans. Over the years, insurance companies not only defeated the Clinton plan but a patients bill of rights, in large part by using front groups and co-opted shills.

[Potter's full remarks are available in mp3 form.]

Potter brought his recitation of the years of insurance connivance to undermine reform to the present by making two things absolutely clear. One, health care in America is already rationed, by health insurance executives who answer to their Wall Street investors. And second, without a strong public insurance option to compete with the private companies and drive costs down:

"…the bill [Congress] sends to Pres Obama might as well be called the Insurance Industry Profit Protection and Enhancement Act."

Potter reiterated the point after the rally, telling me quite simply, when I asked if anything other than a public insurance option could keep private insurance costs down, "No."

He urged everyone to "redouble" their efforts in fighting to make sure Congress took the side of the American people and not the insurance industry.

It's not too late, but time is running short. We need to think of these coming weeks as the most important in the history of the country. We must think that way because they will be.

As he closed, Potter spoke of a family facing terrible circumstances, the kind of story that seemed representative rather than a case history, a way to show just how bad things could get. But when he choked up several times in the telling, it became clear he was not speaking rhetorically but from experience. When I asked him afterwards how ordinary citizens could counter the work being done by the industry through their PR campaigns, he told me:

Talk to friends and neighbors, use some of the language I used We need to make health care reform understood better. I think one of the things that so many advocates have done is talk rationally. Which is an important thing, but you need to reach people on an emotional level, too, to persuade them as to why this is important.

And echoing AG Kroger's words, he also told me:

Tak[e] the time to write to members of Congress. Pick up the phone to call the offices and register your point of view, make sure that members of Congress know that they have … supporters out there. I think if people would just do that and realize that voting for Obama and Democrats in Congress is good, but it's not good enough.

Oregon AFL-CIO President Tom Chamberlain was the final speaker, and he, too, spoke personally, of a cousin who, following a first kidney transplant, had been unable to afford continuing to take his medication and now faced the need for a second transplant. His family's home and his daughter's college education were threatened just as much as his life — a man of only 31 years. Chamberlain, a firefighter, spoke of the rescue so many people were waiting for, in the way an accident victim waits for the siren and flashing night to come racing through the darkness to their rescue.

To those Congressional leaders and members who are on the progressive side, who won't take No for an answer, who are facing that backlash of corporate America every time they go to a town hall, every time there's a robocall: Hold on, we're coming! We've got your back, and we'll be at that next town hall.

Congressman Walden, Senator Wyden: Hear our voices today at this rally. Hear our voices. Hear the plea of the American people: We need change! Stand with us! Fight with us! We can win this.

Finally, of course, there was the call to action. Treasure Mackley, State Director of Organizing for America, and Betsy Dillner, of Health Care for America Now!, the co-organizers of the event, explained how people could get involved with the drive over the coming weeks to enact real reform.

On Friday morning, I asked, somewhat rhetorically, why bother going to another rally. Going to the rally was great; speaking with Kroger and Potter, and then with the two guys opposing government intervention in health care, was a great chance for me to understand a range of issues better. This is not, in the end, about health care. Yes, that's the goal we are seeking, and it's as critical a goal as we are to face in our lifetimes (apart from reversing destructive human-caused climate change). But here in America, the goal is about how we do politics and how our government is run. And for whom our government is run. That's why Barack Obama ran for president, and that was why millions of Americans united and organized in a way never before seen in this country. We won an amazing, historic election, and we changed the course of history.

But that was just the beginning. As John Kroger said, "Trying to get real change in the country is extraordinarily difficult." But we did something few that would be possible: We elected Barack Obama president. Now it is up to us to make sure his presidency is a success. That's not his job; that is ours.

All the audio from the speakers is available. It's worth listening to, especially Curry and Potter. Sound quality is adequate, considering I recorded it with a micro-recorder.

Photos available at Tin Cup Chalice; feel free to use these as you please. If you publish in an award-winning essay for the New Yorker, please at lease cite me.