I spent Saturday morning at Ballroom G of the Austin Convention center, participating in what I thought was a panel on health reform, but what turned out to be a panel on the necessity of single payer, where I was unexpectedly set up as the Evil Incrementalist. It wasn't the most pleasant hour I've ever had, but it was certainly instructive. You can take a lot of approaches to health reform. You can emphasize policy, politics, principles, or some mix thereof. Judging from the panel, Health Care for All, and the California Nurses, could use a bit more politics in their approach. It was a panel about "health reform" -- not care or policy, but "reform" -- at a conference of engaged politicos that never mentioned the Senate, or votes, or the conditions required for presidential signature. There was a lot of talk about "fighting" insurers and other special interests, but not much about what that fight will look like, or where it will take place, or who decides the winner. My argument, was that, for reformers, insurers aren't the real enemy. Setting them up as the opponent actually gives them too much credit. Insurers are stupid, profit seeking beasts -- the enemy is American politics, and in particular, the structural feature of the US Senate that have repeatedly killed health reform in the past. No matter what your policy preference, that's where your organizing has to be focused, because that's where the actual fight happens: In Congress. Not on panels, or on blogs, or among the Left. In the US Senate, where you have to get to 60, or at least figure out how to get rough Democratic unity for using budget reconciliation and then convince Kennedy and Carper to vote "aye" on the same bill. I make this argument at greater length in the panel. My bit begins at about minute 52, and I recommend watching, if only to see me blanch as I hear the phrasing of the question (the word "condemn" is used twice) and realize what my role on the panel is:
