Howard Dean’s Second Opinion

Andrea Bernstein for The Takeaway: Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, one time presidential candidate, and the former chair of the Democratic National Committee. He’s also a doctor. Howard Dean joins us this morning for his thoughts on reform. Good morning governor. Welcome to The Takeaway.

Howard Dean: Good morning to you.

Andrea Bernstein: I just got back from your lovely state. How beautiful it is.

Howard Dean: It’s lovely, and now it’s about 95 degrees here.

Andrea BernsteinYou must be a very happy person living in Vermont.

Howard Dean: It’s nice because we had a lot of rain for awhile and now it’s a great summer.

Andrea Bernstein So now maybe a little bit unhappy about what the president said in Grand Junction?

Howard Dean: You know, I’m not very worried about it. I think that at the end of the day we are going to have a health care bill and we’re going to have a public option in the health care bill. The truth is, you can’t do cost controls and you really can’t ? you can’t really do health reform ?without a public option. And the public option is not so complicated, really. I think they’ve had some trouble explaining it. But it’s very simple. Just let people under 65 get into Medicare. That’s basically what it is ? not quite exactly right ? but that’s pretty much it.

Andrea Bernstein We had a guest at the top of the show, Art Caplan. He seemed to think that a health care cooperative would be okay. Also, it would be a regulated non-profit that would essentially perform the same function. Why don’t you think that?

Howard Dean: Because we’ve tried it before. Blue Cross Blue Shield used to be something like that. It was a non-profit. It used to have public members on the board. But they got eaten up by the private insurance industry. Yesterday on Wall Street, the stocks went down almost 200 points, but the health insurance stocks went up. Now why do you suppose that is? Those people on Wall Street aren’t so dumb. They know that funneling $60 billion worth of government money into the health insurance companies is going to get them a lot of money. And, the co-ops are going to get crushed. Just like, Blue Shield now ? excuse me, Blue Cross ? is mostly a private health insurance company and they behave towards their patients and their doctors just the way the private health insurance industry does. That is, they cut off your insurance if you get sick or they don’t let you have any insurance or they won’t insure sick people and they charge you more. It’s not good for the country and it’s very, very expensive. This is not going to work without a public option.

Amy Holmes for The Takeaway: Governor Dean, this is Amy Holmes here. Just to clarify, you believe in the final version of this. That we will not have co-ops, we will have a government-run option.

Howard Dean: You will have a government-run option because you have no choice. Look, Massachusetts has done a terrific job getting people insured. Only 2.5% of their people don’t have insurance. That’s comparable to a lot of European countries. But they don’t have a public option and their program is going broke. You have to have the public option in order to control costs.

Andrea BernsteinNow why is the public so unsure about the public option?

Howard Dean: Because people have made all sorts of manners of lies. The president himself, got such a kick out of one the little old ladies that got up and said, ?Keep your government hands off my Medicare!? Well, Medicare is a single-payer [program] run by the government. So, the right wing has said all these things. People don’t know. Health care is so complicated that they believe this stuff if it doesn’t get refuted right away, and so that’s what happens.

Andrea BernsteinBut why hasn’t it been? I mean this is President Obama, master campaigner. I mean you yourself, in your campaign, you were all about getting people mobilized, getting people involved. Why hasn’t that happened with health care reform?

Howard Dean: I think because it’s very hard to understand. It hasn’t been clear from the beginning how important the public option was. In order to mobilize people, you really have to have a very clear program, very clear lines. And the other thing is, it’s easy to mobilize people when it’s us and them. And the Republicans have set themselves up to be them because of catering to their own base. Obviously, they’ve made up enormously crazy things: euthanasia, abortion, and on and on and on.

Amy Holmes: But Governor Dean, let me talk a bit about ?

Howard Dean: But our side didn’t see that, because they didn’t really know what we were doing.

Amy Holmes: Let me talk a bit about the us and them in the Democratic party.

Howard Dean: Yeah?

Amy Holmes: Okay, so when you were chair of the DNC, Rahm Emanuel, the current [White House] chief of staff, he was a big critic of yours with the 50-state strategy, and it looked like you were right. Democrats in the House have a 54-seat majority, you control the Senate with 60 votes, you have 29 governorships. What do you think about that?

Howard Dean: I think it’s great to have 29 governorships, and all those seats, but the seats don’t do any good in Congress if you don’t use them for anything. One of the mistakes my party made for a long time, when they were losing, was to try to be more like the people who were beating them. It is actually called the Stockholm Syndrome from the stuff that used to go on during the war ? captives would identify with their captors. And the Democrats did that for a long time. You can’t do that. You have to cut out a clear identity and stand up for what you believe in and then you start winning races.

Amy Holmes: But Governor Dean, that same captive is the president’s chief of staff who’s advising him to negotiate on the public option.

Howard Dean: Well, I’m not going to get in on what’s going on in the White House. Because I don’t think anybody knows what the chief of staff is advising the president. I think they keep that private.

Amy Holmes: Well, we do. He said it out loud.

Howard Dean: Pardon me?

Amy Holmes: He said it out loud. He said the public option was negotiable at the very beginning of this debate.

Howard Dean: Well, you know, he can say what he wants. He’s the chief of staff. But I think without the public option, it’s not real reform, and I don’t think it will pass.

Amy Holmes: Now the situation that you described ?

Howard Dean: Anthony Weiner, who is a member of the House, just said there’s a hundred Democrats who will vote against the bill if it’s not in it. You know, stick with the one that brought you. Stick with the Democrats, stick with the folks ? you know, the Republicans have no interest in this bill. And you’re not going to get more than two or three votes at the most from the House and the Senate. Let’s just have a good bill. Let’s do what Franklin Roosevelt did. We got Social Security through without a single Republican vote. Then we picked up votes in 1936. That’s the way to approach things. Do the right thing.

Andrea BernsteinNow but, the Stockholm Syndrome that you were describing, that sounds an awful lot like the Obama administration’s strategy on health care, which is to make an awful lot of concessions to Republicans who, you know, in the short history of this administration, haven’t shown themselves prone to voting on anything the Obama administration wants.

Howard Dean: Well, I think the president is trying very, very hard. The American people are sick of the ugliness, of the Republicans appealing to anger all the time. The new generation that elected president Obama ? this is the first President of the under 35 generation ? and they elected him. More people under 35 went to the polls than people over 65, and I think they want to have people work together. The trouble is Republicans are kind of this old, grump party, doing things the old ways and they don’t believe in bipartisanship and it’s almost impossible to have a bipartisan bill.

Amy Holmes: But Governor Dean ?

Howard Dean: Could I just finish?

Amy Holmes: Sure, but in all fairness, what about those Blue Dogs?

Howard Dean: The Blue Dogs are great. The Blue Dogs have been very helpful. We need conservative and moderate influences on this bill. This is a country with lots of different people in it and the Republicans aren’t being serious about it and the Blue Dogs are. And that’s been very helpful. And I think the House bill became a better bill because of the Blue Dogs.

Andrea BernsteinThank you very much. Governor Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont, former democratic presidential candidate, and former head of the DNC. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Howard Dean: Thanks so much.