My brother Bob

I remember the day nearly 20 years ago when the phone rang as we were getting ready to head off on a family trip. It was my brother Bob, who we were planning to meet up with. There had been a number of last-minute complications as we got ready for the trip and I was sure he was calling me with another. There was more than a hint of impatience in my voice when I said, “What now?”

“I have bad news,” he said. “I have cancer.”

Bob was 39. Fourteen months later, he was gone, leaving behind a wife and a young son. During those 14 months, Bob not only had to fight the cancer, but he had to fight the insurance companies.

Bob’s insurance policy expired during his illness and the company would not renew the policy due to his now pre-existing condition. He and his wife had to spend down their entire savings – their safety net and the beginnings of their 2-year-old son’s college fund – in order to become eligible for Medicaid.

My family’s situation was no different than the situation 47 million Americans find themselves in every day. Here in Maine 131,000 people live without health insurance. And according to new research from FamiliesUSA, every five days one of them dies because of it.

In the last 20 years, we’ve talked a lot about fixing our health care system and making health care affordable and available to everyone. The trouble is, each year more – not fewer – people find themselves unable to obtain or afford insurance. There has been no lack of good ideas over the years, and there is more than one route to true universal coverage. What has been lacking is the political will to commit to solving the problem, bringing creativity and public pressure to bear on what is now a system driven by corporate profits.

I support HR 676, Rep. John

Conyers’ bill to create a single-payer health care system in America. We already have seen how effective such a system can be: While the private health care system adds 25 to 30 percent in administrative costs, Medicare’s overhead is in the single digits.

As a small-business owner who has had to find ways to provide health insurance for my employees, I know how significant the burden of rising premiums is. As insurance becomes more expensive, businesses become more reluctant to add employees, which in turn limits job growth. For many employees, rising premiums make insurance unaffordable. And more and more workers find themselves in a job that doesn’t include benefits at all – 15 percent of all employees don’t even have the option.

When I was the majority leader in the Maine Senate, I worked hard to lower costs and increase access to health care, including legislation to help cover uninsured children and to put patients and doctors (not insurance companies) in charge of medical decisions.

But the most important legislation I sponsored was a fundamental change in the way prescription drugs were priced in Maine. “You can’t regulate prescription drug prices,” some of my colleagues told me when I proposed it. “It’s a crazy idea and, besides, we’ll lose our contributions from the pharmaceutical manufacturers.” Despite the initial reluctance among my colleagues, as far as the public was concerned, the will to make fundamental change was there. It wasn’t an easy fight – it went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court – but in the end, we won.

To get beyond the reforms we’ve made in Maine, we need leadership in Washington. Whether we adopt a single-payer system or go with something similar to the hybrid plans the Democratic presidential candidates are proposing, we will need to have the political will and courage to stand up to those entrenched special interests that want to keep things the way they are.

We find ourselves at a unique moment in our history, when the enthusiasm and desire for fundamental change is greater than any other moment in our lives. But this moment won’t last, and as Democrats, we owe it to the American people to take advantage of this opportunity. In fact, if Democrats end up controlling the White House and Congress and we don’t do something significant with health care, we won’t deserve to govern – and certainly the voters will never trust us again.

Next month – just a few days after the primary election – Bob’s son will graduate from college without his father there to witness this proud moment. We owe it to him and to all Americans to finally fix our broken health care system.

Chellie Pingree is a Democratic candidate for Maine’s 1st Congressional District.