Jimmy communicated a very passionate and visceral response to his audience through his personal experience. In a deeply moving outcry, he spoke on behalf of every parent living in America. He exhorted our lawmakers in Congress, to make healthcare truly affordable for everyone. Jimmy's plea was both somber and sincere. He chastised members of Congress to quit using our nation's healthcare as a political football and get down to the business of making legislation to protect the poorest and most vulnerable citizens in America. Poor people, who have no other means to obtain healthcare, except for medicare/medicaid, which is being brazenly and shamelessly dismantled by out-of-touch rich Republican politicians in Washington, D.C. and coaxed by special interest lobbyists working for the nation's biggest health insurance companies. Too frequently, the attitude of big business and their heartless, rich, conceited CEO's running their companies, is that poverty makes you less of a human being, undeserving of the basic fundamental blessings of living in America.
Jimmy realized his fortune and the misfortune of the other parents, standing in the waiting room of the hospital and exactly what that meant! Jimmy's show, streamed into the homes, hearts and hands of millions of Americans watching, the refusal of medical care based on the ability to pay, because you are not rich enough to afford healthcare, should NEVER happen in America.
Americans are the people who inhabit the richest country on earth. Today, they are the descendants of the many generations of people who dared to dream and worked and sacrificed to make this country...the richest country on earth. Jimmy was right... it shouldn't happen here. As he said solemnly, head bowed, with a steady voice..."not here"!
Jimmy said his infant son was born with a hole in his heart, so was my Aunt, who died at 9 years old. My Mother said that walking, was exhausting for her undernourished, little sister, who they loved and carried from place to place. My Grandparents did the best they could for my Aunt, but because my Grandparents were poor, uneducated, migrant American farm workers who had no health insurance to pay for cardiac specialists or open heart surgery, she died. They barely could find the money to pay for her to be examined by a general practicing doctor, much less, anything else. They worked picking fruit in the strawberry fields of Southern California. Medicare/Medicaid programs had not been established then. Charity from churches, was the only way to receive any financial help to pay medical bills. There was no government assistance to pay for their little girl's medical care.
When she died, they carried her dead body back to their ancestral home in the Ozark Mountains, to the cemetery of our kin. Her weak, innocent child's body was laid in a grave surrounded by all of our Great-Grandfathers and Great-Grandmothers graves, from long ago. It was a place by the little cobblestone church, built by the hands of sturdy, strong mountain men, across from the baptismal waters flowing from the clear spring-fed creek, on the other side of the 2 lane road cut through the woods. Momma said it ripped their hearts out. They stayed living in the Ozark Mountains, after that. They never left again, no matter how poor they became. Hope for a better life, had disappeared when Aunt Suzie died, for them... forever. Momma said, that they figured they could stay just as poor living around family, as they could living around strangers.
Unless, Congress passes legislation that doesn't penalize people with pre-existing health conditions, the national Trumpcare plan won't make any difference. How has healthcare changed from that time, during the Great Depression era, compared to now, by that measure? My Grandparents would still not be able to pay for my Aunt's healthcare due to her pre-existing congenital heart defect. Even if she had lived, she would still be disqualified and prevented from getting affordable health insurance today, under the proposed ACA Trumpcare plan.
One hundred years ago, the Republicans were considered to be the Progressive party. Now, the Democrats claim that exalted mantra today, with little proof. Theodore Roosevelt was an altruistic statesman and proved instrumental in changing the flavor of choice politics in his day, but his political platform didn't last.
The Progressive Party Platform
The main work of the convention was the platform, which set forth the new party's appeal to the voters. It included a broad range of social and political reforms long advocated by progressives. It spoke with near-religious fervor, and the candidate himself promised, "Our cause is based on the eternal principle of righteousness; and even though we, who now lead may for the time fail, in the end the cause itself shall triumph."
The platform's main theme was reversing the domination of politics by business interests, which allegedly controlled the Republican and Democratic parties, alike. The platform asserted that:
To that end, the platform called for:
- Strict limits and disclosure requirements on political campaign contributions
- Registration of lobbyists
- Recording and publication of Congressional committee proceedings
In the social sphere the platform called for:
- A National Health Service to include all existing government medical agencies.
- Social insurance, to provide for the elderly, the unemployed, and the disabled
- Limited the ability of judges to order injunctions to limit labor strikes.
- A minimum wage law for women
- An eight-hour workday
- A federal securities commission
- Farm relief
- Workers' compensation for work-related injuries
- An inheritance tax
The political reforms proposed included:
- Women's suffrage
- Direct election of Senators
- Primary elections for state and federal nominations
The platform also urged states to adopt measures for "direct democracy", including:
- The recall election (citizens may remove an elected official before the end of his term)
- The referendum (citizens may decide on a law by popular vote)
- The initiative (citizens may propose a law by petition and enact it by popular vote)
- Judicial recall (when a court declares a law unconstitutional, the citizens may override that ruling by popular vote).[11]
Besides these measures, the platform called for reductions in the tariff, and limitations on naval armaments by international agreement.
The biggest controversy at the convention was over the platform section dealing with trusts and monopolies. The convention approved a strong "trust-busting" plank, but Perkins had it replaced with language that spoke only of "strong National regulation" and "permanent active [Federal] supervision" of major corporations. This retreat shocked reformers like Pinchot, who blamed it on Perkins. The result was a deep split in the new party that was never resolved.[12]
In general the platform expressed Roosevelt's "New Nationalism", an extension of his earlier philosophy of the Square Deal. He called for new restraints on the power of federal and state judges along with a strong executive to regulate industry, protect the working classes, and carry on great national projects. This New Nationalism was paternalistic, in direct contrast to Wilson's individualistic philosophy of "New Freedom". However, once elected, Wilson's actual program resembled Roosevelt's ideas, apart from the notion of reining in judges.[13]
Roosevelt also favored a vigorous foreign policy, including strong military power. Though the platform called for limiting naval armaments, it also recommended the construction of two new battleships per year, much to the distress of outright pacifists such as Jane Addams.[14]
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