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Speech on Single Payer Health Care
Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA)
July 15, 2008

 

Mr. Speaker---
We have bailed out Wall Street once already this year and we may be doing it again before long. Now, it’s time to bail out Main Street, by doing what should have been done 50 years ago.  And that is, provide Americans with single payer health care. It is the fastest and most effective way Congress can sure up the American family, because we all know that Americans are either paying too much for health care, can’t afford to buy enough coverage, or can’t afford any coverage at all.

And the cost in dollars and human terms is staggering. A generation ago, the head of General Motors famously said: As GM goes, so goes the nation. It’s no secret that GM and America are struggling today with an economic crisis.  We can make a difference by addressing the single largest expenses facing an American family and American business–health care. 

Every day the American people are forced to dig deeper and deeper into their own pockets to pay for health care and every day American business is forced to transfer more of the burden to employees or drop coverage altogether. America’s health care system today looks like an ambulance riding on one wheel.  And even that wheel will soon fall off if we continue to support a failed system that is not made in America, not worthy of America and nothing more than an accident of history.

In the early 20^th century there was a movement to provide universal health care, but, ironically, it was fiercely opposed by the insurance industry at the time which made its money selling death benefits to those who feared a pauper’s burial. Emerging from the Great Depression in the 1930s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt wanted to institute universal health care, but his advisors feared the American Medical Association would kill FDR’s proposal for Social Security in their opposition to health care.

In the 1950s, legendary labor leader Walter Reuther first won a health care benefit – and pension too- for auto workers in a labor agreement with GM.  Then, Reuther tried to enlist GM and others to join forces and lobby the federal government to institute universal health care.

But business couldn’t see the coming economic storm from global competition and didn’t trust government.  Organized labor - flush from victory in Detroit - saw health care as a perpetual win at the bargaining table.  And organized medicine was unabashed at lobbying until they drove an American universal health care program into the ditch again.

In the second half of the 20^th century, there were other attempts by American leaders, but all of them denied life support by seemingly unlimited lobbying resources. Today, we have nearly 50 million Americans with no health care coverage at all. Another 25 million Americans without adequate protection.  And every American cannot find pants with pockets deep enough to keep paying costs that are already out of sight.

The only universal truth about health care in America today is that every single American knows someone with a health care crisis, or is facing one themselves.  American business has to compete today in a global economy but American business has a major health care benefit expense on its books that its international competitors don’t have.  Even the great companies in my congressional district which are national models for providing employee benefits like health care are being stretched to the limit and their balance sheet, like a rubber band, can only flex so much before it breaks.

We cannot stand idly by and watch when we know that developing and instituting an American single payer health care program can dramatically improve the health of American business and American families – literally and financially.  And for the first time in decades, we have a chance if we are willing to seize the opportunity. There are cracks in the dam of opposition that is holding America back from providing health care to all of its citizens. A new survey of U.S. doctors published recently in the Annals of Health Research and elsewhere finds that 59 percent of American doctors now support a single payer health care plan, which is a dramatic double-digit increase in support in just the last seven years.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors passed a resolution a few weeks ago in support of a national health program. Organized labor recognizes a changing global economic landscape that means they can best represent workers not at one bargaining table but on a national level where everyone benefits equally.

Even business is beginning to rethink its level of trust in the government.  In 2002, Detroit’s auto subsidiaries in Canada strongly supported the continuation of a single payer health care program because of its positive economic impact on them and their workers. A few years ago I asked business executives if they would be willing to pay 6 percent of their revenue to off load health care and no one raised their hand.  Now the average cost exceeds 13 percent for business and a business leader recently asked me if the deal was still on the table.

I am here to say that single payer is on the table.  It is time to breach the dam of opposition and create a single payer health care program for the health and well being of the American people and American business.  We’ve tried the alternatives and they have all failed.  It’s time to do what works.

Thank you.