We the people need to shape health-care reform

Health-care reform rides again, but this is nothing new. Ever since the 1932 Report of the Committee on the Cost of Medical Care, we've had episodic calls for change. New "solutions" are offered, and yet all these solutions have fallen short, failed or backfired.

Consequently, we remain the only industrialized nation that doesn't provide health coverage for all its citizens. State budgets are balanced by cutting Medicaid programs for the poorest of the poor and the sickest of the sick - even though we pay more than any other nation. More than 100,000 people die every year in hospitals alone from preventable medical errors. If these deaths were a tsunami, the Red Cross would be at our door. But mistakes are hidden in silence.

Because of cost, small businesses drop health-insurance coverage, middle-class people are bankrupted even when they have insurance, jobs are outsourced and 45 million-plus people have no insurance. Today, a recession looms ominously, with the potential of more job cuts and lower profits.

Yet nothing changes. Why?

Change requires major state and federal action. Without a clear new vision, special interests win by maintaining the status quo.

After 75 years of stalemate, it's time to take health care out of the hands of politicians and partisan politics. It's time for "we the people" to climb into the driver's seat and demand change based on what we need and want.

Our vision: We see a health-care system that supports the health of all our people, in our own communities. We see a system that doesn't discriminate because of job, gender, race, health, age or income. We can and must cover everyone - not just because it is the right and fair thing to do, but because it will lower costs as well. We could have one uniform set of services for everyone, and those who want more can pay for that option.

We believe people have the right to know the costs, benefits and trade-offs in complex care decisions. We also need accountability in health care as we have in other public models, such as water and power companies.

Our voice - the public's voice - hasn't been heard over the choruses profiting from the status quo. The complexity of our health-care system is held up as a key reason the public cannot solve the problem.

But it's not. The complexity charge is an excuse to maintain the status quo, shouted by the foxes guarding the hen house.

More consensus exists than politicians and pundits lead us to believe. Our survey results from Iowa and Washington state clearly show there is astonishing agreement on some core values and key elements. We offer these visions and values as a starting point to create "The Voters' Health Care Platform." We must start with a vision and core values and build consensus along the way.

We are a pragmatic people who are at our best when we come together to solve problems. That's how we started this country and drove the civil-rights and the women's- rights movements. It's time we have the voice and chart the direction, as we have done before when our leaders failed to address deep inequities.

In politics, anyone can donate to a campaign. In a democracy, only you and I can give politicians their jobs and hold them accountable to us.

KATHLEEN O'CONNOR is founder and CEO of CodeBlueNow!, a national, nonpartisan health-care reform nonprofit that works to build consensus with everyday people and tap the ingenuity of the American public to reform the health-care system. This essay originally appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.