The New Health Dialogue

President Obama spoke to Senate Democrats today about tough issues in the year ahead. And health care is certainly among the tough ones. The President’s message was clear . He won’t back down on health reform. Neither should Democrats.

In response to the anxiety surrounding the Massachusetts special election and the loss of the Democrats’ 60th vote in the Senate, Obama urged Democrats to stand their ground. Even though they no longer have a supermajority, they can’t let themselves get pushed around by political opponents. According to the Washington Post, Obama said:

All that's changed in the last few weeks is our party has gone from having the largest Senate majority in a generation to the second-largest Senate majority in a generation…If anybody is searching for a lesson from Massachusetts, I promise you the answer is not to do nothing…You had to cast more votes to break filibusters last year than in the entire 1950s and '60s combined. That's 20 years of obstruction packed into just one, but you didn't let it stop you.

Obama reminded the Democrats that they know what’s right:

So many of us campaigned on the idea that we're going to change this health-care system. Well, here we are with a chance to change it…We've got to finish the job on health care. We've go to finish the job on regulatory reform. We've got to finish the job, even though it's hard.

We all know that when it comes to health reform, as one of our favorite bands would say, there ain’t no easy way out. Costs will keep rising. Coverage will keep eroding. Unless we act now. Americans need high quality, affordable health care coverage they can rely on, and passing health reform will be a huge step in that direction. Obama’s message was crystal clear. He won’t back down, and he doesn’t want his fellow Democrats to back down either.