Tim Skubick

The crusade commenced with John Dingell Senior in 1933 and continue until 1955 when he turned it over to his son John Dingell, Jr. who carried the torch from 1955 until 2015 and when he retired, his bride Debbie Dingell commenced her journey in 2014 to do what her husband and his father never really finished despite making progress on the issue.

The issue is reforming health care aimed at providing life saving coverage to as many Americans as possible and the arena was and still is the U.S. of Representatives.

Mr. Dingell Senior was known as the “Bull” and he most assuredly passed along his bull-like tenacity to his son whose 6 foot 8 inch frame was intimidating when necessary but beneath that exterior was a kind and joyful man who served in Congress longer than any other person in U.S. History. And when it was time to hang it up, with love and support he turned to his spouse to represent the citizens in his district.

Now, as you might have read, the health care debate continues and was at the center of the recent U.S. government shutdown as a handful of Democrats “drew a line in the sand,” as Ms. Dingell puts it. They refused to re-open the government until the stubborn Republicans egged on by President Trump drew their own line and refused to move past it. The D’s wanted the R’s to extend the health care credits granted under Obamacare before the already high health care insurance costs went even higher starting next month.

You know how that turned out. 8 Democrats bolted, erased the line in the sand and replaced it with their votes to re-open the government and for that vote they got a promise that the senate GOP leader would allow a vote on the extension issue next month.

Asked it the “promise” was not worth the paper it was written on, Ms. Dingell, who refused to sign off on the deal, noted, “that’s probably true.”

Here’s the rub.

A promise to hold a vote is one thing, But there was no promise on what the content of the promise would be.

“We don’t know what the vote is going to be on. We don’t know what the negotiations are going to be one,”she laments about the pig in the poke “deal” her senate colleagues bought.

Like her husband and her father-in-law, Ms. Dingell is all in on bi-partisan cooperation on every issue but especially this one which has dogged the Dingell family for some nine decades

Universal health care is not a reality for those who can’t pay the premiums warns Ms. Dingell and she knows what that means.

She knows of 10 OG/BY clinics in the state “that have closed and some women in rural areas, they are not able to get those services.” She also fears that four outstate hospital will shutter if something is not done.

The Republicans blast her party for helping feed the profits of the insurance companies and hospitals because under the D proposal the tax savings go to those entities and not the individuals.

In the end the two sides may decide to send the checks to individuals but other than talk about it, the warring parties have not put their names on the bottom line.

Meanwhile health care remains a hot button issue as everyone moves into the 2026 election year.

The R’s will blame the other guys for shutting down the government and the D’s will chastised the president and company for the alleged inhuman treatment of those on the food assistance program SNAP.

“The president was willing to go to the U.S. Supreme court” to deny food to those who need it most, Ms. Dingell asserts.

She warns, ” there are some frontline congressional districts in the state where these issues really matter. Health care is going to impact every single member in this delegation. In close districts it does play.”

During an interview she was asked about those maverick eight Democratic senators who broke with the party to re-open the government, How would her now deceased hubby reacted?

At first she demurred but finally confessed that he would have been “colorful” than she as he administered the tongue-lashing in private.

Her response was decidedly more genteel to which he would have said, “Ah my darling Debra.”

The question is can the third Dingell in congress finish the job started by those she loved in a mission that commenced 94 years ago.