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Instead of running from health care reform, Democrats need to swing back, and not dumb it down in reaction to right-wing talking points.
U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut’s Fifth Congressional District, delivered that message during a health care pep talk on Sunday afternoon. He was speaking to a group of 75 members of the Hilltop Brigade.
The Brigade is a group of Greater New Haven activists who knock on doors for Democratic candidates during the crucial culminating four or five weekends of the campaign in October. The group campaigns across the state. Click here for a previous story.
Sunday afternoon’s talk took place at the East Rock home of one of the Brigade’s founders, Stephanie Farber.
Brigade members provided important boots on the ground to help Murphy (pictured above with lieutenant governor candidate Kevin Lembo) beat long-time Republican U.S. Rep. Nancy Johnson in 2006 in the northwestern part of the state. That same year Joe Courtney beat Rob Simmons in the second district and in 2008 Jim Himes beat Republican incumbent Chris Shays in the fourth, all with the help of the Hilltop Brigade.
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Several major Dems and office hopefuls were in attendance to hear Murphy, including Attorney General and U.S. Senate hopeful Dick Blumenthal (pictured with Stephanie Farber), Controller Nancy Wyman, House Majority Leader Denise Merrill, and New Haven State Rep. and attorney general candidate Cam Staples, among others.
Using a Super Bowl Sunday metaphor, Murphy said, “We’re not in the two-minute drill in health care reform. We’re still in the middle of the game.”
Murphy’s message was that the tough upcoming off-year election is definitely not the time to be defensive on health care, even though Democrats have fallen shor tin communicating the pro-reform message. He was, in effect, giving the Brigade talking points for canvassing during the upcoming campaign season.
“I don’t beat ourselves up too much over the messaging,” he said.
Click here for a summary of the bill’s contents. And here for a 2,016-page complete text of the House bill.
Acknowledging that the bill has largely been portrayed as benefiting those currently without insurance, Murphy said the health care bill has “lots of great things for people who [already] do have health care.”
He said people should understand that their premiums will be cheaper and more affordable; that if they go from job to job, insurance will more readily go with them; and, most important, “payment [is] aligned with quality, not volume.”
For example, hospitals currently get paid for every readmission and therefore are rewarded for high numbers of patients. The health reform bill will gradually reimburse less for each subsequent readmission, “incentivizing,” hospitals to focus on quality of care, not volume of visits, Murphy said.
A questioner asked why the Democrats aren’t trying to reclaim the debate by taking out TV ads to trumpet this simple capsule message of quality over volume. Murphy replied: “We don’t have the money.”
Nothing except a single payer system, for example, lends itself to sound bites, he added.
The Hilltop Brigade and similar door-to-door get-out-the-vote efforts offer an antidote to a blitzkrieg of impersonal media ads, Murphy said.
“We can be better daily evangelists for the health bill,” he said.
A soldier in the Brigade asked Murphy to equip him with effective health care bill talking points to explain to confused voters this fall. Murphy listed several. Lowering costs through pooling; covering more people by expanding Medicaid and Medicare; eliminating egregious insurance company practices by ending exclusions for pre-existing conditions.
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Dr. Emmanuel Logiadis (at right in photo) implored Murphy to lead the charge to make sure some changes, such as the Medicare expansion, get passed through reconciliation. The Senate needs only 50 votes in that process, not the 60 it needs to overcome a filibuster.
Medicare eligibility age can be lowered to zero, said Logiadis, a doctor from Trumbull. That would make many of his friends in their 20s and 30s happy, he said. They could now say, “I worked for Obama, and now he has delivered for me health care for life.”
“For the life of me I don’t see why [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid doesn’t actually force the Republicans to filibuster — - I would have killed to see the Republicans argue against expansion of Medicare,” Murphy said.
He predicted that “within a couple of weeks we’ll get a path forward on health care reform. There will be a lot us screaming through the roof to get it done.”
Murphy concluded on a minatory note: “I appreciate the president being a cheerleader on health care, but he has to be a general too, and give us a road map how to get health care across the finish line.”