Senator Ron Wyden, whose Healthy Americans Act is currently the locus for legislative organizing in the Senate, opened the day's session. I've now seen Wyden speak a dozen or so times, and I'm always struck by the same thing: As a speaker, he's friendly. He doesn't intimidate, or exhort, or yell, or lambaste. He's chattier than that. He's self deprecating and conversational. All of which makes him non-threatening. And that makes him pretty good in front of crowds who're uncertain about his intentions. Wyden's speech to the insurers was a targeted appeal, different from the talks I've seen him give before. “I believe that the success of health care reform hinges to a great extent on how your profession responds to the efforts of a new president and a new Congress," he said. "If your profession decides – as it did in 1993 and 1994 – to go out and spend millions of dollars fighting to preserve the status quo, you may delay reform for awhile but you will increase the likelihood of a government run health system with no role for the private sector.” One of the themes of today's meeting, reflected in every speech and many of the questions, was that the insurers are fiercely cognizant that their industry is about as popular as a skin lesion, and if the system collapses, it will collapse, first, atop them. People like doctors, they need hospitals, and they depend on pharmaceuticals. They don't need insurers. Blocking reform may be in their power, but if the delay only leads to an eventual catastrophe, it might also seal their eventual demise. So that was point one: Get on-board now, or risk being thrown under the bus later.
