When Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe voted in favor of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee’s health care reform bill last Tuesday she proved something I have always suspected; that woman has a lot of guts. If I had a choice between her and 100 people who worship the ground I walk on to be on my team, I would pick the senior senator from Maine every time.
See, when I am faced with tough issues I don’t need people who just agree with me and tell me I am wonderful, because I already agree with me and know I’m wonderful. I need people who will stand up to me, make me face hard truths, be more than a speed bump between me and a big mistake and push me to make difficult decisions when I don’t want to do that.
When it comes to health care reform debates, so do you. You need someone who will be politically gutsy and stand up to all the pressure from you, me, doctors, health insurance companies, hospitals, employers and every other pitchfork-waving interest group at the health care gates. You need someone who will disagree with some of what you want in health care reform and spread some of the pain of reform to you and everyone else, because that’s the kind of person it takes to get this job done.
That’s what Sen. Snowe did last Tuesday when she voted for the Finance Committee health care reform bill. She knew the bill was not perfect, knew most of the Republican Party would cross her off their Christmas party lists when she voted for it, knew a lot of voters back home would gag on their moose meat when they heard the news, but stepped up and responded to history’s call anyway.
She could have chickened out, hidden among the folds of those who say the Senate bill is too costly, too controlling, too this and too that, and we would still have loved her. Instead, she stood tall and voted for a health reform bill that is the first, tentative step in the long process of reforming American health care. She led from in front, where real women (and men) do.
To her potential peril, the senator has now stood up like a fox on its hind legs to the hounds of health care’s special interests, leadership of the Republican Party, many of her Maine constituents and thumbed her nose at those without the political will and fortitude to lead us out of this mess. Those opposed to a health care reform bill will now chase her with big money and rabid rhetoric, hoping to prevent her from voting for a final health care reform bill when it comes before the Senate later this year.
They cannot get to her unless they scare us — her Maine constituents — into punishing her for her chutzpa. They will tell us she is going to ruin our health care, ruin our Medicare, hand control of health care over to “Big Government,” bring on a plague of frogs, etc., all to scare us silly and get us to pressure her to cave in next time the voting gets tough.
Don’t do it; when the hounds come looking for Sen. Snowe’s hide, they should find us circled around her, protecting the black mane of Maine’s senior senator. We should tell them we are doing so not because we always agree with her, or because we think the Senate’s health reform bill is everything we want, but because last Tuesday she stood up for us and to us and did the tough thing, the right thing, and we are now doing the same for her.
That will be our moment to follow the senator’s example, to stop letting our fears own us and our individual interests drive and divide us and show a little leadership of our own in our nation’s struggle to reform its health care. Then we would have a senator who could be as proud of us as we have a right to be proud of her.
Erik Steele, D.O., a physician in Bangor, is chief medical officer of Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems and is on the staff of several hospital emergency rooms in the region. He is also the interim CEO at Blue Hill Memorial Hospital.