There is no uncertainty what Peter Roskam will do when the Democratic healthcare reform package comes to a vote, probably later this week. Roskam will vote “no”. Roskam vote will be just the culmination of a year of effort on his part to block the President and Congress from doing anything meaningful to help Illinois residents who are suffering because the can’t afford to purchase healthcare insurance, because they have a pre-existing condition that makes getting coverage impossible, or because the insurance they have won’t pay for the care they need.
Roskam has not only argued against healthcare reform in Committee and on the House floor. No, rather than listen to his constituents and understand their needs, he has undertaken an intensive misinformation campaign designed to promote fear and confusion about the Democratic plans amongst his constituency. And he has used your tax dollars in this war of deception, spending them on huge volumes of direct mail, robo-calls, and town hall meetings designed only to air his point of view. Why is he doing this? First and foremost to cause the President to fail for political gain – a failure on health reform may make other Democratic reforms on immigration and finance more difficult and improve Republican prospects in the 2010 election. And, of course, because it is the will of the big insurance companies who help fund his campaign.
If Roskam is successful in his efforts, and the Democratic healthcare plan fails, thousands will continue to die and suffer needlessly due to lack of care. The bill that is expected to emerge this week will not be a perfect solution. A single-payer plan or national health service would do more to improve quality and reduce costs, but this is a huge first step.
More troubling than Roskam sure “no” vote at this point is an expected “no” vote by Democratic Representative Luis Gutierrez, of the 4th Congressional District in Chicago. Representative Gutierrez is a fine and principled legislator who is an outspoken advocate for badly-needed immigration reform. Representative Gutierrez is rightly upset that the healthcare reform plan on the table would exclude undocumented immigrants from coverage. This exclusion is not merely unjust, it is also bad policy. It will continue to force undocumented immigrants to use emergencies rooms for care. Care rendered will be less effective and more expensive than it would if these workers were included in reform plans. And undocumented workers tend to be younger and healthier than the population at large so their addition to risk pools could reduce premiums for everyone.
Representative Gutierrez is also upset because he feels that President Obama abandoned his pledge to make immigration reform a top priority during his first year in office. We too are disappointed, but I’m not sure that candidate Obama had any real sense of how difficult the healthcare fight would be or of the depths to which the Republican Party would sink in obstructing the Democratic agenda. We think it unlikely that the President could have, practically speaking, advanced immigration reform during the first year but we don’t see that as an abandonment by the President of the cause.
But whether that is true or not, we feel certain that Representative Gutierrez has the potential to kill both immigration reform and healthcare reform in one fell swoop, along with the rest of the Democratic agenda, if he casts a “no” vote on healthcare reform as he has suggested he may do. If healthcare reform fails, we believe that it is over. Neither immigration reform nor any other progressive reform is likely to go anywhere, and Representative Gutierrez will likely end up fighting for immigration justice with a Republican Congress and a Republican President hostile to immigrants.
So, Illinois, Peter Roskam already has his mind made up. Calling him will do you know good. Please call Representative Gutierrez instead and thank him for standing up for immigrants while asking him to change his mind and vote “yes” on healthcare reform. His contact information can be found here.
