OK. We lost. The “‘Just Say No’ to Everything” party is doing their end zone happy dance all over the media and the pundits are foretelling the doom and disappearance of the Democratic Party. Senate Minority Leader, John Boehner, is saying health care reform is dead. Christopher Dodd, retiring Democratic Chair of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, is talking about a “pause button”.
I agree with John Boehner. With the upset victory by Republican Scott “Number 41” Brown in Massachusetts, there is no way that National health care reform will make it out of the conference committee, let alone receive the votes it needs to make it to the President’s desk for signature. That’s too bad. A chance at affordable and accessible health care was thrown out the window in the name of the status quo of ginormous insurance company profits.
Well, we get it. We’re big boys and it’s time to move on. Perhaps now Obama will wake up to the fact that his philosophy of trying g to play nice and elicit some semblance of bipartisanship from Congress is a lost cause. It’s time to take off the gloves and get serious if anything of his agenda is to be salvaged.
What can NAR do?
In an article for Inman News, Rob Hahn waxes poetic about the political clout of the National Association of REALTORS® (note: you may need to be a premium member of Inman News to read this archived article).
OK. Fine. If NAR is, indeed, so powerful, now is the time to step up to the plate for its members. NAR needs to act like the special interest group that it is and start spreading the money around and start talking to Senators and Congresspeople about affordable and accessible health care for REALTORS®. That’s right. General population? Millions of unemployed or those with pre-existing conditions? Fogedaboutit!
We want ours.
Currently, the NAR has a membership of a million two, give or take a couple of thou. That’s a lot of people and a huge “group” by any standards. Surely, some insurance company somewhere can see the advantage of stepping up to cover this group. If it’s a legal issue about Associations or whatnot, then the laws need to be changed in our favor.
Let’s rev up the engines, NAR. Affordable and accessible health care for REALTORS® now!
