It takes a village to raise a child, but it takes a crisis to rouse a policymaker.

In this time of economic crisis, it seems stimulus goes both ways. As the need to bail out our economy grows larger, policymakers seem freed to think bigger.

And so, when the New America Foundation’s Next Social Contract Initiative hosted panels of experts last Friday to look at social policy after the economic crisis, the focus was not on what we can’t do, but what we must do. Karen Kornbluh, a New America alum who was the principal author of the 2008 Democratic Party platform and a policy adviser to President-elect Barack Obama, provided the keynote to the event (video below).

Kornbluh called health reform one of the strongest portions of the Democratic Party Platform, noting how much agreement they found in drafting the section. Looking forward to how to repair and improve our nation’s system of social insurance, Kornbluh stated, “Health Insurance reform is obviously the biggest thing we can do on the social insurance front, and it’s something I think there’s a lot of impetus behind.”

Len Nichols, the director of New America’s health policy program, agreed with Kornbluh’s assessment. Speaking on a panel about what the future holds for our country’s mandatory spending programs—such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security—Len reiterated what the good people at CBO have so frequently said, that we don’t have an entitlement problem, we have a health care cost growth problem.

During the health care portion of the event moderated by our colleague Julie Barnes, Joe Minarik of the Committee for Economic explained just how that health care cost growth problem has created a compelling business case for reform. Genevieve Kenney of the Urban Institute explained the role of Medicaid and SCHIP can act both as a safety net for low income people and a lever for stabilizing the economy. Finally, our colleague Elizabeth Carpenter explained that the cost of doing nothing to reform our health system made the status quo unsustainable and prospect of reform attainable.