How Do Progressives Explain The Affordable Care Act To Their Constituents? Matt Cartwright And Lee Rogers

Matt Cartwright wasn't in Congress when the Affordable Care Act passed. People taken in by conservative lies-- or who are freaked out about the incompetent roll out of the website-- can't really blame Cartwright the way they're trying to blame other Democrats in Congress. Cartwright could have laid low and let the battle rage on around him. But that's not the Matt Cartwright I know and that's not the Matt Cartwright Blue America backed when he was running against corrupt Blue Dog Tim Holden in 2012. As Ed O'Keefe reported in Monday's Washington Post Cartwright is leading on health care reform and explaining the bill to his northeast Pennsylvania constituents-- despite all the negativity that other, less courageous, congressmen are ducking. I used to live in Monroe County, which is part of Cartwright's district. Plenty of people there need the benefits of the Affordable Care Act.

Cartwright spent his first year in office preparing constituents for “the ACA”-- he never calls it “Obamacare”-- and reminding them to sign up for benefits at HealthCare.gov.

He hoped to spend time during an extended October recess helping people sign up for health insurance, but a sputtering Web site and broken campaign promises are forcing him to defend the law. He still believes in the law and his support remains strong, but he knows the troubled rollout has shaken his constituents’ confidence.

“If you want to give me a good faceful for one of my political positions, I can take it,” he told about 100 of them gathered inside a small community theater Friday.

From the stage, Cartwright said President Obama “was out over his ski tips” when he said Americans would be able to keep their health-care plans if they liked them. In reality, “if you like your policy, and it still remains grandfathered in, and it doesn’t change, and it applies within the law, then you can keep it,” he said. “And he should have said that.”

“Shoulda, woulda, coulda!” a woman shouted from the front rows.

“He should have said that,” Cartwright said again for emphasis.

Embarrassed and frustrated by the early weeks of the health insurance exchange’s rollout, Cartwright is still convinced that the law will work, so he is fighting back with information and brutal honesty.

“I’m the last person who’s going to sit here and say this is a perfect law,” he told the crowd. “But it is the law, and it’s up to us to wrap our hands around it, to get together and learn about it and to do the best for Americans under this law.”

...Cartwright fielded 14 questions about the health law over 90 minutes. He was flanked onstage by Athena Ford, advocacy director for the Pennsylvania Health Access Network, and Jim Palmquist, president of the Pennsylvania chapter of AARP. Ford and Palmquist deftly answered detailed questions about coverage and eligibility requirements while Cartwright dealt with rumor control.

Are lawmakers exempt from the new law? “We are not,” he said. “It’s very clear that I will be enrolling in the Affordable Care Act.”

Is the Internal Revenue Service competent enough to enforce the penalties for not signing up for insurance? “All they’re being asked to do under this system is to keep track of tax credits and tax deductions,” he said.

Inviting local professionals to handle the detailed questions was smart, said Bruce Marianelli, 63, one of many Republicans who showed up for the meeting.

“If it was just him onstage, I don’t think he would have left here with skin on,” Marianelli said.

Dusan Neumann, 68, agreed. “I hardly can understand that a government that can eavesdrop on the private conversations of Angela Merkel cannot put together a decent Web site that a 15-year old Chinese hacker could hack in 15 minutes,” he said.

Neumann did not vote for Cartwright last year, but after listening to the congressman he said: “He scored better than I would expect. He was able to admit that there are serious flaws.”

And even some of Cartwright’s Republican critics said they learned something.

“You know what I learned? The fact that there are still people who will be uninsured,” said Dorothy Daubert, 70. “I just assumed this was going to cover everybody or else they’d be on Medicaid.”

The presentation was exactly what Cartwright’s liberal Democratic supporters wanted to see. Guy Anthony, 61, eagerly wants the health law to succeed and refuses to believe television news reports about the early struggles. “If Apple had come up with a new iPod and the Web site was so jammed because everybody wanted it and they couldn’t get through, it’d be called a raving success,” he said.

“Democrats should be a lot more aggressive and a lot more assertive in defending their positions,” Anthony added later. “One thing that’s true of Republicans-- it’s a strength-- is that they know how to stick together and move their agenda forward, whereas the Democrats do not. They’re too wishy-washy.”

…“I think people appreciate honesty, and there are a couple of things we have to surrender, throw up the white flag about,” he said.

Despite the setbacks, Cartwright is clear about his bottom line. “The big picture is that ACA is a great thing, and in the long run it’s going to be one of the greatest things for this country,” he said. “History will smile on the ACA.”

Certainly, there are good things about the ACA but, basically, it was a conservative Republican strategy that Democrats agreed to as a compromise with Blue Dogs and New Dems who refused to support single-payer… Medicare for all. History will smile on the ACA when it leads to single payer health care. That's certainly the way most of the Blue America candidates have expressed it. Lee Rogers, who nearly defeated Buck McKeon in 2012 and is planning to finish the job in 2014 is a prominent, internationall-known surgeon and the national spokesperson for the American Diabetes Association. He expressed it from the perspective of a physician:

"I'm open to listening to all options, but as I see it right now the only system where both [patients and providers] win is a single payer system, like Medicare-for-all. But the big losers would be the health insurance companies. Just the opposite of Obamacare, where the big insurers made out like bandits-- 46 million new customers and no caps on premiums. Many people are afraid of single payer healthcare, thinking it is a government takeover of healthcare. It's not a take over; the government already controls healthcare. Medicare's administrative costs are about 3%, compared with up to 25% for private insurers being profit and going to investors and CEOs. Single payer healthcare would be good for our economy. Business should really be embracing it. The second largest expense for most businesses is health insurance. In 1950, Americans spent 3% of their income on health insurance or healthcare, now we spend 17%. Imagine that cost being shifted to a more efficient system with lower overhead-- where treatments were offered to patients based on their levels of evidence. Imagine no pre-existing conditions, preventative care covered, and prescriptions covered. Single payer can accomplish this. A larger focus on preventative care would improve the economy, because sick employees are less productive. If we reduce obesity, and its related diseases like diabetes, arthritis, back pain, we can have more productive workers."