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Maybe healthcare reform is our Hoover Dam
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Hoover Dam
In the depths of the Great Depression the United States government undertook the largest project in the United States to date--The Hoover Dam. Billed to provide electricity and water for the West from the Colorado river and to finally tame the Colorado so it would quit washing out farms--the dam was audacious. No one knew first of all if it could be done. The price tag was huge...a whopping 146 million. There were no companies big enough to even attempt the project. There was no infrastructure in the desert, no railroad tracks or roads. The entire Colorado river had to diverted while the dam was built. People doubted that anyone could ever dam the Colorado with a giant cement plug. People said we had enough problems without spending money on a giant public works project.
The damn was contentious from the start. Men died. The temperatures reached one hundred and thirty degrees. The contractors had strict deadlines and safety was not a premium. Men fell to their death, died from heat exhaustion, dynamite, trucks, steam shovels. But the work went on. Herbert Hoover made a speech at the ground breaking that went nowhere. People didn't believe in him. FDR took over and immediately changed the name to Boulder Dam. No one wanted to think about Herbert Hoover now that unemployment had hit twenty five percent. The workers went on strike for better conditions and the construction companies hired more men and broke the strike. The work went on.
We now face another huge public works project. Maybe the biggest change in our lifetime of the relationship to the government to the individual. Huge. Sprawling. No precedent. Rancorous. One side seeing salvation while another side sees socialism. Insurance companies have dug in while the Democrats and President Obama see this as their greatest victory or their Waterloo. Meanwhile people die for lack of insurance. People die from bad health insurance. The work goes on as we roll to the Senate.
Seventy some years later the Hoover Dam stands not only as a dam but a monument. It is a monument to what the American people could accomplish in the very worst of times. The damhas provided electricity and water to the West for decades and stands as an amazing technological achievement. No one doubts the wisdom of building the dam now. One hundred and sixty five men died in the construction.
The question for us now is what is going to be our Hoover Dam? What good will come out of The Great Recession? We will become historical. People will watch PBS specials on our time and they will point to moments where we pulled together and out of the darkness produced something very good. They will cover the bitter debate, formations of new political parties, the election of a man that could only have occurred during extraordinary times. But what will our Hoover Dam be? What will outlast us as our legacy to the triumph of human will over disaster and prove that we did something as enduring as a concrete dam providing light and water...if not life.
It has to be the gift of Healthcare for our people.
Wiliam Hazelgrove writes in Ernest Hemingway's attic. HIs latest book is Rocket Man.
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