AlterNet: Health Care: It's Time for a Major Overhaul

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Health Care: It's Time for a Major Overhaul

By Alexander Zaitchik, AlterNet. Posted December 1, 2008.

A huge coalition of progressive and union forces is gearing up for political battle on the health care front.



Back in early September, a microcosm of the looming health care debate played out on the stage of the Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce. Karen Ignagni, CEO of the insurers' largest industry association, was leading a roundtable discussion as part of a national "listening tour" organized by her organization, America's Health Insurance Plans. Waiting for Ignagni in the auditorium were activists from the local chapter of Acorn, who had come to share their thoughts on the CEO's market-based reform ideas. It didn't take long before the line of questioning became a little too heated for the Chamber of Commerce moderator. "What do you expect?" he exploded in front of a stunned audience. "The insurance industry has to make a profit -- that's what they do!"

Following the Albuquerque confrontation, the insurers' group quickly lowered the profile of subsequent roundtables.

Ignagni may or may not have known at the time that those targeting her with acorn-shaped rhetorical darts represented the activist wing of Health Care for America Now, an umbrella organization launched in July to win a "guarantee of quality, affordable health care for all" by the end of 2009. Acorn is one of 16 groups on the HCAN steering committee, which is a veritable Who's Who of progressive grassroots, netroots, and labor groups, including USAction, MoveOn, SEIU, and the AFL-CIO. Four months after launching with a press conference in the National Press Building, HCAN now consists of more than 500 organizations and boasts the backing of the President-elect, his incoming chief of staff, and 151 Democratic members of Congress, among them leading progressives and "pro-business" Blue Dogs alike.

As Karen Ignagni and her colleagues in the pharmaceutical and insurance industries are by now well aware, HCAN constitutes a double-threat to those standing in the way of solving America's health care crisis. As it was built to do, the well-funded coalition wields influence inside Washington and out, where it controls a millions-strong activist army, with constituent group organizations complimented by 80 full-time HCAN field staff in 42 states. "We represent the deepest single-issue coalition in modern American history," says HCAN co-chair and USAction director, Jeff Blum. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/workplace/109230/health_care%3A_it%27s_time_for_a_major_overhaul/