Congressman Dingell, champion of universal health care and longest serving member of Congress

Mark Masselli: This is Conversations on Health Care. I am Mark Masselli.

Margaret Flinter: And I am Margaret Flinter.

Mark Masselli: Margaret, we are at the homestretch in the Health Reform
Debate and I think there is a renewed spirit of optimism in the air. President
Obama is on the campaign trail again talking directly to the American people in
town hall settings across the country, laying out his vision and building public
support for the final push.

Margaret Flinter: That’s right, Mark. And I thought the president has a tone of
fearlessness and conviction in his voice when he spoke to a crowd of mostly
college students at Arcadia University right outside Philadelphia on Monday. And
I am sure it's going to be the same spirit in St. Louis where he is holding another
rally. It almost feels like all the anxiety over Republican Scott Brown winning the
Massachusetts Senate Seat and even the anxiety over the Bipartisan Summit a
few weeks ago are a thing of the past.

Mark Masselli: It's clear in President Obama’s mind and he has made it clear this
week that it's time for the analyst debating to be over and he is calling on
Congress for a straight upper down vote.

Margaret Flinter: And what a lot of confusion over that upper down vote there
has been! So, let’s try and clarify a little bit. There has been a lot of hoopla
about the parliamentary procedure known as Budget Reconciliation and the facts
are a little bit different. What the House is working on is passing the current
Senate Bill. That bill was passed with 60 votes not through reconciliation. The
House now needs to pass it with a simple majority on a straight upper down vote.
That’s all that’s required for any bill to pass the House. And if this happens, it will
allow the bill to go on to the President to be signed into law.

Mark Masselli: Margaret, you are right on. The confusion about reconciliation is
not on the main bill. That will be passed in the normal way. It will be on the
amendment to the main bill after passage which will require reconciliation, and
again only in the Senate where they would be required to have 50-plus votes to
get that bill passed. But we have to keep our eyes on the House as the
Democrats there need to pass the Health Care Reform bill and that’s the
challenge in front of us.

Margaret Flinter: And I am sure everyone is feeling the pressure. I heard that
Representative Joseph Cao of the Louisiana who was a guest here on
Conversations back a few months ago is going to vote no. He was the only
Republican in the House of Representatives to vote for Health Reform bill back in
November. It's probably a measure of how difficult it is for them.

Mark Masselli: Speaking of guest Uwe Reinhardt who spoke with us last week
wrote in his blog that he was a little depressed after the Summit. He doesn’t
think policy-makers or the public are ready for Health Reform because
everyone’s different visions of the ideal health systems are driven strictly by
ideology. He writes “I have seen efforts at Health Reform tumble into this
ideological gulf which is only grown wide over time. Health Reform is likely to
tumble into this ideological abyss in the future until one or the other ideology
clearly triumphs in the political arena”.

Margaret Flinter: And we know the professor calls it as he sees it. We will be
keeping a close eye on the political arena in Washington to see if Congress can
triumph and pass a Health Care Reform bill and do it before the Easter break.
We know that Congressional procedures can be _______3:32 for people to
understand. So we will stay focused on giving our listeners to take away in this
voting process. We hope we have been doing a good job of breaking down the
Health Care Reform Debate. We know the truth requires much more explanation
and in-depth analysis, and we will do our very best to give you that. So please, if
you have feedback, email us at [email protected] . We would love to
hear from you.

Mark Masselli: And speaking of the truth, I think our guest today can help us be
through some of this information so we can better understand this important
order of business. We are happy to have Congressman John Dingell as our
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guest today. Congressman Dingell who represents Michigan’s 15 District has
fought long and hard for Health Reform. He is the longest serving member in the
House of Representatives and he is referred to as the Dean of the House.
Congressman Dingell is a strong supporter of National Health Insurance.

Margaret Flinter: No matter what the story, you can here all of our shows at
Chcradio.com. We are happy to announce the Public Reality Radio in Grand
Rapids, Michigan. We will start broadcasting our show and we will be keeping
you posted, and you can subscribe to iTunes to get our show regularly
downloaded. If you’d like to hang on to our every word and read a transcript of
one of our shows, come visit us at Chcradio.com. Now, before we speak with
Congressman Dingell, let’s check in with our producer Loren Bonner with the
headline news.

Loren Bonner: I am Loren Bonner with this week’s headline news. In one final
attempt to gain support for a health care overall, President Obama turned up the
volume in his plea to the American people. At a rally at Arcadia University just
outside of Philadelphia on Monday, President Obama told a crowd of mostly
college students that Health Care Reform can't wait in the phase of rising medical
costs and plunging coverage. He said that Americans should not have to wait
any longer for Health Care Reform.

President Obama: When is the right time for health insurance reform? Is it a
year from now or two years from now or five years from now or 10 years from
now? I think it's right now and that’s why you are here today.

Loren Bonner: President Obama used the insurance industry as his main target
citing big rate increases on individual policies and saying his legislation would
protect consumers from the worse practices by insurance companies.

President Obama: There is no secret they are telling their investors this, we are
in the money, we are going to keep on making big profits even though a lot of
folks are going to be put under hardship.

Loren Bonner: President Obama has made it clear that now is the time to act
and that another year of negotiations would not help. He rejected repeated calls
from Republicans to draft new legislation from scratch. And he made it clear last
week that he will move forward on passing the Health Care Bill without
Republicans’ support.

President Obama: We are close, very close. So I ask Congress to finish its
work. I ask them to give the American people an up or down vote.

Loren Bonner: President Obama did say, however, that he would include some
Republican ideas in his proposed legislation, like funding state grants on medical
malpractice reform and curbing waste, fraud, and abuse in the health care
system. But before a final bill can be discussed, the House needs to approve the
Senate health care bill passed in December. Obama would then sign it into the
law and senators would promise to make changes on issues in the bill that have
concerned House Democrats. Those changes would be made under budget
reconciliation rules. Language in the senate bill over abortion has proved to be a
critical issue in gaining or losing house votes. Socially conservative Democrats
don’t like the abortion language in the senate bill because it implies that people
receiving government subsidized health care can obtain an abortion. This week,
Congressman Bart Stupak, a key Michigan Democrat and one of the most
outspoken on banning abortion language, said he is willing to talk with House
leaders this week to come to some understanding on wording that would impose
no new limits on abortion rights, but also would not allow use of federal money
for the procedure. Even with a few things still to be worked out, House leaders
said they are in the homestretch of drafting the corrections bill which will then be
sent along with a Senate-passed health care bill to the Congressional Budget
Office for a cost estimate perhaps by the end of this week.

Mark Masselli: This is Conversations on Health Care. Today, we are speaking
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with Congressman John Dingell from Michigan’s 15 District, the longest serving
member in the House of Representatives and a Champion for Universal Health
Care. Congressman, you were at the bipartisan televised summit President
Obama held at the Blair House a few weeks ago. It clarified the differences

between Republicans and Democrats, and led to the President adding a few
ideas offered by Republicans to its plan. Talk to us about the overall mood of the
Summit, and did it shift the tone of the National Conversation?

John Dingell: Well, the conversation there was friendly but it wound up with by
republican colleague saying that it was very friendly, nice, but it accomplished
nothing. Whereas you know the National Conversation is one of the more
obnoxious, in fact probably the most obnoxious that I have heard in my career in
the Congress. And the tea baggers and the others who opposed the President’s
Bill engaged in some of the most scandalous misbehavior I have ever seen in
terms of their conduct in addressing the Substantive Bill and that goes as far as
quite frankly outright lies about what the Bill does. The death panels and the
business pulling the plug on grandmother would quite frankly reflect discredit on
a scoundrel.

Margaret Flinter: Congressman, after the summit on health care, you said that
the last perfect legislation that was presented to mankind was delivered by
Moses at the Base of Mt. Sinai and the fingers of God which is a Greek quote.
Now, that seems like a precursor to acknowledging that any bill that would be
passed is likely to have some shortcomings. What are the short comings in your
eyes?

John Dingell: Well, they are more the products of the inadequacies of the Bill
than they are in things that in fact are bad. For example, I don’t like at all the
idea that there is going to be impacts on plans. I think that that is going to be
extremely counterproductive. I think that’s the absence of a public option, which
may occur but which I hope won’t, is a calamitous difficulty because it eliminates
a meaningful honest competitor in the national insurance market. I think the
weaknesses they are putting on the exchanges in some of the proposals are a
very serious problem. Way back when I was a small boy, the Democrats came
forward with a regulation of the securities industry and the way they did it was to
insist that, in that, securities be sold through exchanges which were essentially
self regulatory bodies and which regulated then the markets. And they in turn,
the markets, NASDAQ ______ 11:09 and the New York Exchange and some of
the others, were regulated by the SEC. It worked out well as long as we had
honest regulators and people who understood the law and were willing to see to
it if it was obeyed. Now, that ended when George Bush appointed Cox to be the
Chairman of the SEC at which point everything went to hell in hen basket. And
the harsh fact of the matter is without that, a major protection for consumers to
see to it the proper behaviors conducted by the insurance companies and that
they do in fact comply with the law is going to be extremely hard. Remember,
insurance companies make their money in the fine print and the policies are
written by a batch of Philadelphia lawyers who care about one thing and they are
administered by a bunch of green eye-shaded faint-hearted appraisers who are
looking to see how they can exclude the costs and the services that the
insurance company should give to their assured, and that’s how they make their

money. So, you have to put in people who could do a good job and regretfully
the states have never been able to address this question adequately. And I am
not satisfied that the Federal Government is going to be able to do so until this
happens, because as the old saying goes “the devil is in the details,” and you
could bet the devil is going to be having lots of time to write these insurance
policies in the future to maximize the profits for insurance companies and quite
frankly to skin the insurance buyers.

Mark Masselli: We’re speaking with the Congressman John Dingell from
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Michigan’s 15 District. We have been hearing a lot about Democrats rushing
this Bill through Congress Republicans and the conservative talk shows have
been using the phrase “ram it down our throats” quite a bit in the last week. We
just passed the one-year anniversary since the Health Reform Debate started
and you have been in politics for a long time and know momentum is important to
passing the legislation. Do you think the Bill will be voted on before the Easter
recess and are you worried if it doesn’t hit that target?

John Dingell: Well, first of all, I am a legislator, not a prophet. And the second of
all, people who have been prophesying dates have always wound up with a red
face. If you watch me, I have not and I am going to continue that record to avoid
a red face. Now, having said these things, that comment by the Republicans
ranks with what they have been saying about death panels and pulling the plug
on grandma and taking away the choice from people and putting government in
charge of health care, that’s just playing raw outright fiction at best, and at worst,
it’s just playing lives. The harsh fact of the matter is that they have had about 15
months during which they would have been able to make all manner of trouble.
They have slowed down everything around here, not only on health care but on
everything else they are doing. And over the Senate, you will find the
Republicans repeating movement of everything from the prayer to the motion to
adjourn, and to be truthful, which I don’t think I could get the large prayer
approved by the Senate without some kind of Republican filibuster.

Margaret Flinter: Congressman, it seems to me that mostly, we are hearing
about what the House and the Senate, the Democrats or the Republicans think
about Health Reform lately. But there are an awful lot of Americans out there
who it seems would benefit in a pretty short time if the Bill passes. I am thinking
of the provisions that would make it possible for people with preexisting
conditions like cancer to buy courage at affordable rates, and I think that goes
into effect pretty quickly, maybe as soon as 90 days after the Bill is signed into
law. So, where do you think the public is on this? Why aren’t we hearing more
publicly from people who might benefit from Health Reform?

John Dingell: The public is thoroughly besotted because all you’re getting out of
this place is a profound deluge of falsehoods by my Republican colleagues.
They are refusing to point out for example that preexisting conditions could no
longer bar you, your employer or your family from insurance. That’s something

that is desperately needed by the insured public. Today, they can cancel your
insurance policy while you are on the gurney being rolled in the operating room,
you can't do this under this Bill. And there are all kinds of other things. You have
to have a right of appeal if they deny you benefits. You have to have policies
which were written so that they are clear, so that the assured can know what he
is getting and understand all those wonderful technical fine print statements that
enrich the insurance company so gloriously. And there are a whole array of other
things which will save money for the American public and desperately have to.
One of the things that’s going to be of enormous benefit is the fact that we are
paying since this legislation reduced about $51 billion in charges that the average
citizen is paying for those who have no insurance policies, and that’s getting the
American people. And if you want to look at another thing, which is of the most
urgent concern, today the average premium for an ordinary employer, insurance-
sponsored family costs about $1,115 a month, that’s $13,375. That’s more than
the yearly income of somebody working for minimum wage job. Those numbers
are going to expand to about $25,000, and in the case of employers, it will be
about $26,000 in about 10 years. Now, that means all manner of things are
going to happen and it means mostly it's going to be tremendous dropping of
these insurance policies by employers who can go longer afford to make them
available.

Mark Masselli: Congressman Dingell, all eyes are on the House of
Representatives, who are the remaining camps in the House that still need to be
corralled and what would you be doing to persuade those wavering Democrats?

John Dingell: I’d like to give you an answer on that. There are lots of them
around and if your listeners want to do something, they should write their
Congressmen and insist they push this Bill, whatever it is. But I am a single-
payer advocate. I believe that’s the way that it should be done. It works in
Britain, it works in France, it works in Germany, it works in Japan, it works in
Canada. The people they love it, the cost of their insurance goes up half as fast
as ours. There it’s about 8% of the GDP, here it's about 15%, and it's headed for
20% in less than 10 years. We simply have to understand we have to do
something about this or it's going to destitute the whole country. And when a guy
goes to bed, he hasn’t got the vaguest idea whether he is going to have
insurance when he wakes up in the morning.

Margaret Flinter: You occupy the seat that was once held by your father who
was one of the architects of the New Deal and was famous among other things
for introducing the National Health Insurance Bill, The Wagner-Murray-Dingell
Bill. We have read a little bit about his personal story. Certainly, he was a
passionate believer in universal health care as a social justice issue. So, we
have a question for you. If your father were here with us today, what would he
say about the Bill in front of us?

John Dingell: I think he would see it through the same prism that I see it, a good
bill. It could be a whole hack of a lot better. But he understood that you’ve got to
help people and you can't strive for more perfection. And as President Obama
observed the perfect must not be permitted to become the enemy of the
necessary. My dad used to say that perfection is always the enemy of the good.
But either way, he’d say for the sweet love of God, let's get out, get this bill
passed so that we can head off calamity that’s coming in this country because of
health care cost increases and because we are going to be taking care of the
needs of 45 million or more people who have no health insurance. There is a
million in Michigan who have not. This is bankrupting state governments, it’s
bankrupting cities, and cost increases are showing up in the taxes that people
pay for real estate because communities are going broke in this, and the cost of
medicine is simply going to go up and up and up until we deal with it. The Bill
has a lot of things in it that are going to constrain cost such as moving towards
health information technology throughout the whole system of health care. We
are going to have insurance exchanges, perhaps not as good as I’d like, but they
will be there. And it's going to provide the mechanism for curbing excessive
prices. In early day, the insurance companies surround and they figure out how
they are going to increase prices, how they are going to reduce benefits because
that’s how they make their money. And one of the interesting things that they are
doing is figuring out how it is they are going to serve less and make more money
because that’s, believe it or not, the way they are doing it. And one of the things
we have to confront with regard to our friendly insurance companies is the simple
fact that 11 states have got insurance price increases before their regulatory
bodies of as much as 59% and there is I know nobody who can look into straight
eye including a Republican and say that that is justified by good conscience or
economic necessity. And I don’t know of anybody who is outside and say to
some, say that they want that.

Mark Masselli: Today, we have been speaking with Congressman John Dingell,
the longest serving member in the House of Representatives, a champion and a
clarion voice on Health Care Reform. Thank you for speaking with us today.

Mark Masselli: Each week, Conversations highlights a bright idea about how to
make wellness a part of our communities into everyday lives. This week’s bright
idea focuses on fighting childhood obesity through community-based
interventions. Somerville, Massachusetts, a town northwest of Boston is the best
known example to date. Like many ethnically diverse urban cities across the
United States, Somerville had a high rate of obesity and diabetes. Somerville
also had the infrastructure that with the some small changes could become an
ideal urban space for healthy living. The effort began as a community-based
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research study at Tufts University for overweight 1 through 3 graders in the
Somerville Public Schools. The project called Shape Up Somerville went on to
introduce healthy eating in collaboration with the introduction of more physical
activity. Shape Up Somerville work with Somerville School Food Service
Department to enhance the quality and quantity of healthy foods for students.

Schools now purchase locally grown products for their school lunches and school
gardens help familiarize children with the different vegetables. Parents and
community members are engaged through a newsletter with updates on the
project healthy tips and coupons for healthy foods. The results posted on the
Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University website
found that the project reduced the weight of kids who were overweight or at risk
of becoming overweight. The research has since grown into a citywide
campaign. Somerville now has two community gardens and a farmers’ market.
It even launched two community supported agricultural sites where residents can
purchase shares of nearby farmers’ crops. Changes have also been made in
restaurants to offer things like smaller portions and more visible nutritional
labeling. The Somerville project has become an example of a community rather
than an individual fighting for a healthier society. In a recent campaign to fight
obesity, First Lady Michelle Obama identified Somerville as a national leader
citing local practices to be used in a national model. Several communities across
the country have begun testing whether they can replicate Somerville success, a
small community experiment that has now become a national standard for
fighting childhood obesity. Now, that’s a bright idea.

Margaret Flinter: This is Conversations on Health Care. I am Margaret Flinter.

Mark Masselli: And I am Mark Masselli, peace and health.

Margaret Flinter: Conversations on Health Care, broadcast from the campus of
Wesleyan University at WESU, streaming live at Wesufm.org and brought to you
by the Community Health Center.