I was in the hospital for three months

 

Tammy Baldwin is the U.S. Senator from Wisconsin and a fierce defender of working families. 

I’m Tammy Baldwin, and I’m proud to represent Wisconsin in the United States Senate. I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you a little more about myself, why I ran for U.S. Senate, and why our campaign in Wisconsin is so important. When I was a child, I was diagnosed with a serious illness and spent three months in the hospital. I was raised by my grandparents, and when I got better, they looked for an insurance policy that would cover me in the future. However, because of my previous illness, they couldn’t find such a policy. Not from any insurer. Not at any price. They had to pay for my health care out of pocket — and they had to make enormous sacrifices to do so — all because I was a child who had been labeled with those words: “pre-existing condition.” I got into public service because I saw my grandparents stay up nights, worried sick that I would fall ill again and they wouldn't be able to afford my care. No one should ever have to go through that. Like 133 million Americans, I know what it's like to have the label "pre-existing condition" attached to my care — and before the Affordable Care Act was passed, many of us could be denied coverage. Today, insurance companies can no longer discriminate against someone based on their pre-existing condition. I championed that health reform and fought to allow young people to stay on their parents’ insurance plans up to age 26. These policy changes have led to millions more Americans getting the health insurance they need. So, you can imagine my frustration whenever Republicans launch a new attack on our health care or threaten protections for folks with pre-existing conditions. They’ve spent years playing politics with people’s lives. And if they’re successful, countless Americans could find themselves in a place where insurance companies, once again, write all the rules. The people of Wisconsin did not send me to Washington to take people’s health care away, which is why I fought against Republican repeal efforts and why I will never back down. Folks like you deserve leaders who work tirelessly to ensure every single person has access to quality, affordable health care, regardless of whether or not they have a pre-existing condition. I am going to keep fighting to make sure we get those leaders elected, but I need your support. We must protect the Affordable Care Act and elect more leaders who will fight to ensure every American has access to quality, affordable health care — regardless of whether or not they have a pre-existing condition. If you agree, sign your name alongside mine today.... I am not going to let anyone make me forget where I came from or why I got into public service in the first place. My own personal experience has always inspired my work to do everything I can to make sure that every American has quality, affordable health care coverage. It is time to move forward toward the day when we make good on the guarantee of high quality, affordable health care coverage for every American. That is a goal worth reaching, and, as Americans, we shouldn’t let anyone tell us we can’t. So long as you're with me, I know we can overcome any challenge we may face on the road ahead and stop the Republicans from taking away health insurance from millions of Americans once and for all. Thank you for standing with me. — Tammy

PAID FOR BY TAMMY BALDWIN FOR SENATE

Tammy Baldwin for Senate
P.O. Box 696
Madison, WI 53701
United States

RSN: FOCUS: Making Health Care "Accessible and Affordable" Isn't the Same as Making It Universal and Free

 

 

01 December 21

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FOCUS: Making Health Care "Accessible and Affordable" Isn't the Same as Making It Universal and Free
Luke Savage, Jacobin
Savage writes: "Centrist Democrats use phrases like 'accessible and quality health care' to sound like they support reforming the broken US health care system while avoiding the only genuine reform: removing health care from the market altogether."

Centrist Democrats use phrases like “accessible and quality health care” to sound like they support reforming the broken US health care system while avoiding the only genuine reform: removing health care from the market altogether.

In promoting the latest phase of his legislative agenda, President Joe Biden recently tweeted the following:

Access to quality, affordable health care should be a right in America — not a privilege. My Build Back Better Act will help fulfill that promise by extending tax credits to lower premiums for folks on the Affordable Care Act and lowering prescription drug costs.

Notwithstanding its underwhelming second portion (Biden’s statement achieving the climbdown from sweeping moral proclamation to tax credits in a mere two sentences), plenty of well-meaning Democratic partisans probably missed the subtle rhetorical sleight of hand at work in its first.

For over a decade at least, centrist Democrats have engaged in an effective if cynical balancing act vis-à-vis their messaging on health care reform — trying, and often succeeding, to placate an electoral base strongly in favor of a universal, single-payer option and a donor class overwhelmingly opposed to all but the most tepid and toothless policy changes. Biden’s sentiment thus enjoys quite a hallowed lineage among Democratic politicians, who’ve increasingly made misleading descriptors like “accessible” and “affordable” their stock and trade while eliding the sweeping reforms a majority of Americans want and need.

You don’t have to look very far to find senior Democratic figures committing themselves to some variation of the proposition that “health is a right, not a privilege.” Revisit the health care sections of the 2016 and 2020 Democratic platforms, in fact, and you’ll find it in both. The language used in 2016 was arguably more unequivocal, the 2020 version edging toward the same rhetorical sleight of hand recently used by Biden: “Democrats will keep up the fight until all Americans can access secure, affordable, high-quality health insurance — because as Democrats, we fundamentally believe health care is a right for all, not a privilege for the few.”

At face value, and when paired with the language of rights, adjectives like “accessible” and “affordable” read more as intensifiers than qualifiers, which is a major reason they appear so often in speeches, statements, and campaign pledges by centrist liberal politicians. Who among us, after all, is against care that’s both cheaper and easier to use?

The structural problem with the United States’ health care system, however, is precisely its reliance on a market-driven model — i.e., one premised on the irreconcilable contradiction between public need and private profit. There is, quite simply, no actual way to make health care a right without removing the logic of commodities from the equation altogether: a route that by definition precludes talk of better “affordability” or “access.”

There’s a reason this kind of language tends to be absent in societies with actually existing universal health care systems. People in places like Canada and the UK, by and large, would find the kinds of things America’s liberal politicians say on a regular basis both strange and alien, and for good reason. When a country has experienced the decommodified version of health care, there’s generally no going back — and the very idea of having to flash your credit card at a hospital or doctor’s office no longer computes.

It’s a fact that health insurance companies and their powerful lobby understand all too well, which is one reason they’ve spent untold sums on advertising to undermine the push for Medicare for All. It’s also the reason that the only real path toward making health care a right runs through direct confrontation with the corporate health care industry and its profit-driven model — a confrontation that’s certain not to happen as long as words like “accessible” and “affordable” remain watchwords.

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