Notes from the Left Coast

Drummond Pike’s Blog

One cannot escape the media frenzy about the sweet young 11 year old girl kidnapped for 18 years by some wacko in Antioch. Details cannot be minute enough to elude broadcast — what the tents looked like, the vacant stare of the victim’s daughter, fathered by the wacko, the way the victim answered phone calls for his printing business, and all the rest.

In contrast, we can’t seem to find an article that accurately analyzes the benefits that the proposed reforms of the broken healthcare system might produce, or the damages brought down on us by the unwieldy patchwork that is the current system. Instead, we seem deluged by scary stories about “death panels” and how “the government is going to pull the plug on grandma” and the like. Fox News, of course, treats this drivel as fact. The rest seem to treat it as reasonable debate with virtually not a word about how the current system does much worse.

Tides Momentum Conference Website

Crystal Hayling,
Roger Hickey, Anthony Wright, and Jacob Hacker, Momentum presenters.

At our Momentum Conference, beginning this coming Monday afternoon, we hope to bring some rationality to the conversation about healthcare. Last year, Jacob Hacker (author of the “public option” idea) laid out his view of the prospects for real reform if Obama were to win the General Election. Now that we are there, and this is the highest thing on the President’s agenda, we’ve witnessed, as we have so often, the devolution of an intelligent policy debate into a mud-slinging contest in which alarmists are decrying things that don’t exist (death panels and plug pullers) and progressives — ever the earnest ones — are trying to convince people through complicated rational arguments.

What seems to command attention on Fox are these senior citizens who want to “keep the government out of the health insurance business” but even more adamantly demand that Congress keep its hands off Medicare…one of those government-run healthcare programs. That media really don’t say that much in response to such irrational debate is fascinating…and sad.

First thing next Tuesday, we are convening three very different folks to bring us up to date on where we stand — Anthony Wright leads Health Access California and has led numerous state and local campaigns for health reform; Crystal Hayling, CEO of Blue Shield of California Foundation and has worked tirelessly on healthcare delivery especially to women and children, and Roger Hickey, co-Director of Campaign for America’s Future, a leading advocate for national reform. It should be a refreshing session, especially if you are a Fox News watcher.

Why is it, I cannot help but wonder, that the current folks entrusted to oversee most covered people are getting off the hook in the midst of this swirling debate? The insurance companies are no one’s friend. Anyone you know who has dealt with a serious medical situation would hardly argue for the current system. These companies engage in terrible practices, trying desperately to pursue their business model that says they should collect as much money as possible and pay out as little as possible. How can anyone think this is going to lead to good health outcomes. Nor can anyone explain how having these companies provide health insurance to everyone will change anything. Yes, they may be forced to accept pre-existing conditions, but, bottom line, they will collect as much as they can, pay out as little as possible, and pocket the rest. The French, with their excellent single payer system, are laughing their heads off. Hopefully, though, we’ll move on from town hall meetings and get this thing done in some acceptable form. Tuesday morning at Momentum, we’ll be trying to figure out how that might be possible.

I sit here watching two high performance sailboats getting ready to race on this crystal clear day in San Francisco. It’s a wonderful time of year in the late summer, when the fog retreats and the people come out to the shore. Absolutely glorious. But me? I’m hunkered down in front of my screen trying to sort through my opening remarks for Momentum, our fourth conference highlighting the best of new ideas to advance progressive public policy.

Don Hazen, the character who conceived of and has built AlterNet, the wonderful aggregator of progressive news and commentary, has asked me a couple of provocative questions about Momentum. Several revolved around the idea that progressives are confused about how to speak to the new Administration. Are we supporters or critics? Have we already been so burned by the healthcare debate that we are ready to turn on the new team, or what? He wanted to know if our conference, very nearly sold out, much to our surprise in this most difficult of years, was going to answer some of these questions.

As I told him in response, that’s not really our role. First, the progressive community is larger — much larger — than the 300 plus folks who will assemble on Monday afternoon at the W (SF). One would have to be seriously delusional to think we might speak for the entire progressive community, although to hear Glenn Beck talk about us, well maybe we do! However, I digress.

News people, like Hazen, want a story, and they are very good at getting them. At Momentum, though, we are looking for what might become a story in the future. All good political stories begin with ideas that somehow take flight, get traction, and sometimes become policies, or at least political fights about policy, that really are newsworthy. At Momentum, we concentrate on the ideas. Last year, for instance, Jacob Hacker held forth on the transition from our current broken healthcare system and argued brilliantly for an approach that saw a "public option" as a pivotal tool that would help move the chances for change forward. Little did he know that his "compromise" position might so quickly have become the lightning rod for the debate we see this year.

One voice on this year’s program that should be galvanizing is Sony Kapoor from Europe. He will be talking in very direct and compelling ways about the critical need for international financial reform, picking up from last year’s speaker Rob Johnson who sharply depicted an "oligopoly" comprised of 6 firms that traded derivatives among themselves while telling all it was a "marketplace." Some of us, of course, wish we’d paid just a tad more attention to Johnson. We could have avoided much of the meltdown, but that’s another story. Kapoor, who worked in the belly of the beast, will describe how the problem is really much bigger than the U.S. Solving it, needless to say, will take more than reforms in Washington. And speaking of that fair city, we’ll also be hearing from Laura Quinn about Catalist, one of the most important new tools for progressive advocacy and voter engagement groups in a generation. Then, early Wednesday, we’re delighted to have John Kao (author of Innovation Nation) talk about what is needed to truly foster imagination and innovation in society. It’s all going to be quite a ride.

So, this all is probably not a very good answer to Mr. Hazen, but what I can assure him is that if he spends a couple of days next week with us, he will likely take away more than a few ideas that he probably hasn’t heard before. For change really to happen, isn’t that where it all begins?