Dean: GOP Tactics Are Bad for America
Dr. Dean, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and governor of Vermont, told "Early Show" anchor Harry Smith that the movement to reform health care is not dead, because the American people want it. "What they didn't want was something that was written by the insurance industries," he said, "and this is a very Washington-centered proposal that finally came over to the House.
"So I think they'll try again, put something in there that the American people want. The American people really do want us to do something about this."
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Dr. Dean said he backs running the House and Senate bills through reconciliation, rather than starting from scratch, but he was not optimistic that Republicans would contribute to the process. "John Boehner, the minority leader, [said] that they weren't going to vote for anything that we proposed," he said. "Republicans are using this as a tactic to kill health care to embarrass the president. That's not the right thing to do for America — America does need some real insurance reforms.
"You could simply expand the Medicare program that everybody knows to people who are over 55 instead of 65. The House and the Senate passed very good expansions in Medicaid which helps young people, for example, and hard working people with no insurance. Those are the kinds of things that you can do. And we can run those through reconciliation. The chairman of the Budget Committee said he'd be willing to look at things in the budget bill.
"I think if we can't get the whole thing, we can get some good stuff done before the election," Dr. Dean said.
"Am I being a Pollyanna to think that after all of this effort was put into this and now it doesn't seem to be working, that both sides could sit down together and say 'What do we really have in common?' and work together to form something that might be palatable to help the 40-some million people who don't have insurance or the vast majority of those other folks who are one medical catastrophe away from bankruptcy?" asked Smith.
"I always think that's worth trying," Dr. Dean replied. "The president's tried awfully hard to get even one Republican to support this. They believe if they obstruct this agenda that they can benefit from it, and I think that's wrong for the country. But the Republicans have always been great at opposition, never very good at leadership.
"And so if we can work with the Republicans — we'd sure like to, but we've had our hand out for six months and they've had no interest. We just need to get this done."